


TIME IS THE LONGEST DISTANCE

by spicyshimmy



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, F/M, M/M, Mind Meld, Slash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-16
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-29 14:50:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 50,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1006690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyshimmy/pseuds/spicyshimmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Narada destroys Vulcan--and the USS Kelvin, sent to defend the threatened planet--and, in the process, kills a young Spock's father along with both of young James T. Kirk's parents. Orphaned and unable to make it out of Riverside, Iowa, Jim's nothing but an auto mechanic picking bar fights for fun when a mysterious ship carrying an old Vulcan crash-lands in a corn-field, and the two of them head out on a road trip that's as much of a mind trip for Jim as anything. <i>Jim had seen stars fall, obviously. He’d seen plenty of explosions in the distance that were less natural, too, both near and far, as well as a few smaller vessels, mostly privately run, brought down on repeat during the primetime news bulletins.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this is shaping up to be another long one! I'll update every other day, barring unforeseen natural disasters or crash-landing Vulcans.

Jim had seen stars fall, obviously. He’d seen plenty of explosions in the distance that were less natural, too, both near and far, as well as a few smaller vessels, mostly privately run, brought down on repeat during the primetime news bulletins.

That night, he saw one of ‘em drop through the dark sky to land in the cornfield on his way home past curfew, while driving alone on his bike down the empty road.

The clock on the bike’s dash said it was fifteen past oh four hundred.

Jim cut the engine, the echoes of the impact making the ground shudder beneath his feet. For the time being, at least, there was no sign of fire—and no approaching wail of a local law enforcement vehicle’s siren that said authorities were already on this one. That’d cut off the possibility for a rare part or two of salvage to get picked up by an enterprising guy who just so happened to be in the right place at the right time.

The trick was, Sam’d told Jim once, not being at the crash site itself but about twenty feet or so left of center. This wasn’t some eye of the storm bullshit. Luck skewed off target, made its own bull’s-eyes.

Jim leaned against the handlebars. The engine of the old bike grumbled but the fuel cells held out, sputtering back to life—you just couldn’t buy ‘em the same as you could build ‘em yourself, not if you had the right supplies. Which wasn’t too often, but it could happen.

It’d started to rain, soft but unmistakable at first, by the time Jim cut the engine of the bike a second time—parking it just far enough from the steaming crater that no stray sparks would fry the fuel cells he’d wired together with hope and a prayer. Some days, most days, they ran on nothing more than sweet talk and stubbornness.

Jim’s split lip showed no signs of healing anytime soon but the sting was familiar; the crash site wasn’t. The heat from the wreckage made his skin flush, warmer than his blood during any late night bar brawl with a couple of over-zealous, underpaid, no-imagination townies.

 _Yeah_ , Jim thought. _Happy birthday to me_.

Jim had a pocket-light dangling off his keychain; it wasn’t exactly regulation standard but it’d help him check out what was under the hull for anything that’d managed to survive the crash in one piece. Anything, not anyone; the odds of the latter happening weren’t high and the odds of Jim knowing how to help were even lower than that. He swung the flashlight’s long, narrow beam in a simple arc like he was surveying the damage on a pickup that’d just rolled into _Frank’s Antique Auto And Hoverparts Repair_.

Not all engines were built the same way; not all of ‘em used the same kind of fuel. But they were usually stored in the same spot, so Jim crouched in the damp grass where he figured the fuel cells had to be, hair plastered against his forehead, squinting into the darkened hull of the unfamiliar ship.

Single seater. Made for one. No passenger space. Dash lights dimmed, a computer screen flashing static. Jim’d never seen anything like it on the news or in the databanks—or even in the Starfleet systems when he hacked in to read up on damaged fuel cell repair logs.  

It was either tech that’d come from a foreign planet—it didn’t look Klingon _or_ Romulan, but it was harder to hack into intel files on those, especially lately—or even like something familiar that’d been modified, upgraded beyond recognition. Jim rested his fingertips on the curved white edge of what might’ve been an emergency escape hatch, then pulled his hand back, hissing.

The damn thing was still sizzling hot, although the rain was starting to cool it off.

When Jim sucked on his fingers to soothe the burn, they tasted like scorched metal.

Inside the ship, something groaned.

It wasn’t a computer and it wasn’t a distress signal. It was a deep voice; old, unless the patter of the rain was distorting the natural sound. Or pain—pain could make a guy sound decades older than he was.

Jim thought about switching off his flashlight and hightailing it out of there, maybe pounding in an emergency call once he got home to give an anonymous tip to the local hospital.

The trick was staying left of center. Sam’d known better than Jim even then, ten years ago, when he’d left town and made it out without being dragged back agan. Even if he’d always been the one getting in trouble in school, Sam was the smart one. Jim’d turned in papers on time and raised his hands whenever he knew the answers—and found out fast where that got him.

Nowhere.

Still.

Jim swung the flashlight beam up and around. Light reflected off countless, polished glass panels, bright enough that Jim shielded his eyes. When he’d adjusted the angle and lowered his arm, he saw the body. Gray hair. Gray robes.

And green blood.

‘Holy shit,’ Jim said, then regretted it once he realized he’d done what he always did: made himself a target. Drawn an arrow straight to him. X marks the scavenger.

Not like there was much the old guy in there could do about it even if he did have a problem with someone rustling through his ship for spare parts. He was hurt and it seemed like it had to be bad, although Jim wasn’t close enough to tell whether it was from the crash or whether something had happened to him that’d _made_ him crash. Either way, there was no mistaking the few, soggy green stains in those weird gray robes of his, or the dark trickle that ran from his temple down past one hollow cheek.

It took Jim a couple of seconds to figure out the geezer wasn’t totally conscious. His head jerked toward the sound of Jim’s voice, but it wasn’t a voluntary reflex. The pale strands of his hair parted when he moved, framing one pointed ear.

That just confirmed what Jim had already known, the realization that’d crash-landed in his gut like a second, smaller vessel, one with perfect aim.

This guy was _Vulcan._

You didn’t see too many of those around these days.

Jim could rule out Romulan because there were certain distinctions to look for. He had to get closer to verify his first guess, since he couldn’t see the ever-popular bald head and big, fuck-off tattoos, which would’ve been a dead giveaway. But Romulan brow shape was usually more prominent, less humanoid than a Vulcan’s—and not as intense as what the Klingons were rocking. That exaggerated detail tended to show down into the bridges of their noses, and neither of those features applied to the old man in the crash site.

Even his eyebrows weren’t right for a Romulan. They were intense in their own way, but they didn’t go springing off in all directions.

Jim didn’t realize how far he’d come to get that closer look until the Vulcan’s eyes snapped open and Jim jumped, stumbling back against the control console with a crash. He cursed, feeling the shape of the console against his wet jeans: smooth alloys warm from whatever circuits had been fried beneath them, not a panel or a throttle in sight. It was so fucking weird, nothing like anything he’d seen or even read about. There wasn’t a ship like this in Starfleet’s classified files on Vulcan tech—what little of it they’d managed to salvage from the Science Academy before their planet collapsed in on itself twelve years ago.

Still, the weirdness of the ship couldn’t top the Vulcan’s eyes. They were dark enough to be black, the iris spread so wide that there was barely any sclera peeking in from the edges. His brow bone hung heavily over them, not Romulan-style but more in a way that made his eyes look hidden in shadow: like twin fuel cells nestled at the center of a secure compartment.

He stared at Jim and Jim stared back, taken in by the absurdity of the moment. The Vulcan’s breathing was shallow, ragged at the edges, like he was holding back—or like he was aware enough to keep from jostling himself with excess movement. His ship shuddered under them and the sound of static intensified in Jim’s ears.

‘You should be more careful with yourself, old timer,’ Jim said—because someone had to say something, or else it was gonna get even weirder. ‘You and I both know Vulcans are an endangered species.’

The Vulcan’s face contorted, eyebrows lowering and knotting to form a deep crease in his brow. For a second, Jim thought he’d succumbed to his injuries, drawn his final breath. But it wasn’t that. The Vulcan was still breathing, just in labored beats. His hand went to his side, putting pressure on his ribs.

‘That…cannot be,’ he said slowly.

‘Yeah, well, like it or not, it can—and is.’ Jim slid sideways along the consoles, keeping his distance, keeping his eye on the exit. ‘In fact, I would’ve said _practically extinct_ before today. Never actually seen one of you guys around for myself. I hear you don’t get around Earth much, and even when you do... I don’t think a place like this is first on your sightseeing list.’

Something creaked overhead. Jim heard a high-pitched, electric whine intensifying where he’d estimated the fuel cells had to be. The ship was overloading; whatever she ran on had fused instead of powering down, heat creating the friction that was already building to an explosion. Another thing for Jim to get himself caught in unless he hauled ass out of there.

But he wasn’t the only one trapped in the blast zone this time.

And the old guy wasn’t making it out on his own steam.

Luck might’ve been what’d kept him in one piece when he landed but no matter how lucky you were, eventually, that luck had to run out.

The floor beneath Jim’s feet was vibrating; the console at his back hummed.

Also, the Vulcan’s eyes were open again. As dark as they were, holding no hint of reflected light from any of the sparking, snapping electrical parts around them, Jim could feel them trained on him. He wiped the rain out of his own eyes with his shoulder and took a step back.

‘Jim,’ the Vulcan said.

For a second, Jim froze.

‘Whoa.’ He held up a hand, putting it between them. Not like there was anything to worry about; whether the guy knew his name or not, _why_ he knew his name, it was obvious he wasn’t about to stand on his own two feet, much less make any sudden movements. He was creepy, but he wasn’t a threat. Not in his condition. ‘OK. How the _hell_ do you know my name?’

The Vulcan let his eyes fall shut. The trickle of green blood from his temple curved under his jaw and disappeared. His breathing was too shallow now to see in the shadows. ‘Then it is you.’ Something like a smile—only it didn’t actually change the shape of his mouth—passed over the Vulcan’s face. Maybe it wasn’t a smile at all. Maybe it was a trick of a spark plug blowing out by Jim’s boots, casting bright light in the hollows of the Vulcan’s cheekbones. ‘Fascinating.’

Later, Jim’d be able to tell him it was that word in particular that’d convinced him to haul a stranger out of the wreckage of an even stranger ship—putting enough space between them and its smashed hull that, when the first explosion rocked the ground and lit up the corn field, it was only a flash of heat on their skin.

‘Damn,’ Jim said, arms under the Vulcan’s armpits. ‘You know you’re heavier than you look?’

There was something about being unconscious that intensified a body’s weight. It was when you let go, when you weren’t thinking about holding yourself up, that gravity really got to you. Jim’s breathing was just as labored by the time he lugged the old guy to his hoverbike, where he thought again about leaving him—in the middle of the road, where the authorities would be able to pick him up and bring him in for medical treatment—but the Vulcan had woken up again.

‘Jim,’ he repeated.

It was eerie—deep, important, implying all kinds of stuff, like Jim’s name meant more on his tongue than it ever had on anyone else’s. Jim couldn’t place the quality, the weariness, but he could acknowledge that the Vulcan was saying his name like he believed it’d help. Like it held more meaning for him than it did for Jim.

Nobody said his name that way.

‘Jesus,’ Jim said. ‘Would you quit doing that?’

‘No,’ the Vulcan replied. ‘That is not my name. I am Spock.’

‘OK, Spock.’ Jim readjusted his grip and felt Spock flinch. ‘You up for a ride on my bike?’

‘Is there an alternative?’ Spock paused. Jim was almost certain, in all the profiles of Vulcans he’d read, none of ‘em had included sarcasm or dark humor. ‘Do not concern yourself with my injuries. In time, given the proper period of rest, I will be able to heal.’

‘I could leave you here,’ Jim said.

‘But you will not,’ Spock replied.

Jim made a face; it wasn’t like Spock’d be able to see him do it. ‘Just for that, I _should_ leave you here.’

‘I believe, at the very least, that your innate curiosity will prevent you from doing so.’ Spock’s green blood, Jim noted, was cool. Some had gotten on the back of Jim’s wrist and the rainfall was too light to wash it off right away. ‘But I also believe that you would not leave me here for other, more altruistic reasons.’

‘You might know my name but you don’t know _me_ , old timer,’ Jim said.

But he hauled Spock onto the front of his bike and braced him, body to body, against the handlebars anyway.

Spock had been right—if only about the curiosity part.

*


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mind-melds? More like mind-melts.

It was close to dawn by the time Jim cut the bike’s engine in the garage. Frank’d be out cold; there was no chance of any bumps or creaks in the floorboards being enough to wake him. Jim kept to his digs in the basement, did all of the hard work at the auto shop, and if he got back late, long after Frank turned in for the night, he could avoid any family bonding time.

It’d been years now since the last time Frank’d been bigger enough that whaling on Jim was still an option.

Spock sagged against Jim’s chest as Jim swung his leg over the bike. Its kickstand supported both of them until Jim shifted his grip and got Spock onto his feet.

‘A curious choice of residence,’ Spock said. But it was like he knew being quiet was important; his voice was a whisper and, after that, he didn’t say a word.

That was fine by Jim, since he wasn’t looking to get any Vulcan opinions on his _curious choice of residence_. For one thing, it wasn’t a choiceat all. Bad luck and worse circumstances had landed Jim where he was. That, and his very own foolproof combination of just enough brains to know it was shitty but not enough brains to get out while the getting was good.

There weren’t many roads heading out of Riverside, Iowa, and the ones that existed didn’t lead anywhere profitable.

Jim was better off being a big fish in a small pond than being one of a couple thousand bright-eyed, hopeful new cadets who’d been blasted out of space by Nero’s warship. Starfleet’d lost a pretty chunk of its armada before they smartened up and started pouring money into the science division, trying to come up with a better way to defend themselves from superior Romulan firepower.

Earth hadn’t been sucked into a black hole of any kind like Vulcan as far as Jim could tell—Riverside was only the metaphorical kind of black hole, not the literal—so whatever they’d come up with in San Francisco, it must’ve been working.

It wasn’t the balancing act Jim’d pictured it being to get Spock down the steps into his set-up in the basement. The guy was all robe as far as Jim could tell, since he leaned on Jim’s side like an armful of heavy wool and not much else.

Time and age wore everything down. Basic deterioration was one of the laws of nature but it was still a sobering glimpse into a future Jim hadn’t put much thought into for years.

An old Vulcan was even rarer than the rest, now that so few of them had lived long enough to get gray in their hair.

Jim thought about telling him that. _You know, chances are you’re a living legend,_ or, _I bet you’re some kinda miracle,_ but nothing he came up with sounded right. There was no point in opening his mouth just to prolong whatever this was. Weird. Unsettling. A good deed that probably wouldn’t go unpunished. Jim could feel Spock’s chest where it rose and fell against his side and his grip where he held to Jim’s shoulder.

There was strength in that hold. Maybe Jim wouldn’t write him off just yet.

Either way, he couldn’t let on to what he was thinking. When they reached the bottom of the steps with the low crossbeam that Jim’d smacked his head on about a hundred times, all he said was ‘Easy, old timer,’ under his breath.

Spock was tall and he cottoned on to what Jim was talking about fast, ducking before he could bag himself a nice head injury to go with whatever he’d done to his side.

‘You seem particularly fixated on my age, Jim,’ Spock said.

‘Yeah, well.’ Jim leaned to one side to flick the light switch with the flat of his palm. ‘You look about a thousand, give or take a couple centuries. I’m trying to decide if I should phone you in to the record books.’

The fluorescent fixtures above their heads flickered, then flared to life. Spock winced, one shoulder going up like light was an assault he had to protect himself from. Jim’s fingers found the dimmer switch he’d jimmied together one afternoon when he had nothing better to do, adjusting the brightness to something less drastic.

It wasn’t like there was much to see. Jim had an old, sagging couch set up behind a glass-top table, with a frame he’d made out of metal scraps that couldn’t be used to build anything more useful. There was a mattress on the floor in the corner and a steady stream of clutter from there to the tiled-off portion that made up his kitchen unit.

‘It’s no med station,’ Jim said, just so Spock wouldn’t get his hopes up in advance. ‘And whatever I’ve got in the way of med supplies, it probably wasn’t designed for Vulcans.’

‘I require only a quiet place to rest and recover.’ Spock’s shoulder came down, but he didn’t say thanks for the light adjustment or the place to crash. Instead, he added, ‘Jim.’

‘Not liking that name trick any more here than I did back at your ship, old man,’ Jim said.

That ship—that gorgeous, fascinating ship. It was probably being ransacked for parts while they spoke—all the parts that hadn’t blown up, anyway. The find of a lifetime and Jim had come away with the one thing he couldn’t sell for scrap or use to make his bike faster.

Sometimes the voice in his head that sounded an awful lot like Frank made a valid point. Jim was smart, but it wasn’t for his own good.

‘Spock.’ Spock lifted his free hand to his chest in a labored, deliberate movement. ‘My name is Spock.’

‘Yeah, we established that one already. Short term memory loss, huh?’

‘If there is, it is not mine—as you persist in calling me by a different moniker.’

‘Kids these days,’ Jim said, heading toward the kitchenette. He didn’t sound like Frank when he said it but they were words Frank would’ve used, just without the biting sense of irony. Jim winced at the faded echo anyway. ‘That’s what you’re thinking, right? You want me off your lawn?’

Silence answered him. Jim turned, half-opened packet of instant coffee in hand, to see Spock on the couch with his eyes shut; he didn’t look like he was sleeping but he didn’t look like he was awake, either. At least he didn’t look like he was dead—which would’ve been twice the pain in the ass, bringing him all the way back just so he could croak on Jim’s time, as Jim’s business, Jim’s mess to take care of.

Jim swung past him while the coffee was brewing to check that he was still breathing. He was. Jim checked a couple more times, then drank the finished coffee on his bed with his feet up and crossed over the pillows, staring at the old posters he’d put on the ceiling when he was younger. Movie stuff, mostly; a few recruitment ads for Starfleet; one that talked about a colony sign-up opportunity on Tarsus IV that’d never made it out of the gate, because its planning stages were right when Nero’d shown up.

Jim’d been eight years old then. He and Sam’d made it all the way to the lottery center to put their names into the mix for the colony roster—Sam was the one who hotwired Frank’s precious antique convertible to get them there, teaching Jim how to jimmy the engine in the process—when the news about Vulcan hit Earth.

After that, all off-world departures were halted indefinitely and Frank showed up in the crowd that was watching the news to haul Jim and Sam off in between casualty reports.

That was when Jim had learned how to build his own transistor radio: so he could listen to the news while he was locked in the attic, where anything he touched and fucked up wouldn’t be anything that mattered. Frank always split them up for punishment, Jim up high and Sam down below in the basement. All night, Jim’d listened to the reports coming in, completely alone except for the sober voices of official reporters mixed with long, agonizing stretches of pure static.

At the time, Jim hadn’t been able to imagine what a planet like Vulcan looked like before it’d disappeared, although he wound up knowing a little something about what it was like to have the ground pulled out from under his feet eventually.

It was a week later, when Starfleet sent some of its boldest and bravest after Nero to retaliate, that the U.S.S. Kelvin was blown to pieces.

Not before its acting captain George Kirk managed to save two of the four ships that’d warped to Nero’s location behind the Kelvin. Winona Kirk had been on the Kelvin with him, though, and they’d gone down together.

For some reason, Sam wouldn’t look at Jim after that.

Jim finished his coffee, nose wrinkling and mouth twisting when he was hit with the bitter taste at the bottom of the mug. The sun was already rising. The bleeding Vulcan was still on his couch. If Jim didn’t open up shop, nobody would—but he’d still be the one who took the hit for wasting valuable work hours lazing around instead of keeping up with business.

Jim left Spock a note on the table pinned under his empty coffee mug.

_WENT TO WORK. TRY NOT TO SCREW ME OVER AND MAKE ME REGRET SAVING YOUR ASS LAST NIGHT.  
WHAT THE HELL DO YOU EAT, ANYWAY? VULCANS ARE VEGETARIAN, RIGHT?_

He’d read about that, too. Back when reading was still an escape instead of an unfulfilled, impossible promise, like one of the old mobile ships that’d hung over Jim’s crib when he was a baby. When he wasn’t a baby anymore, he’d cut the wires off them and kept them lined up on a shelf over his bed, until Sam hitched a ride out of Iowa for good and Jim threw every last one of them into the river.

They’d sunk.

They weren’t that kind of ship.

The day was long and hot and Jim worked under the hood of a truck for hours until his hands were black and his stomach was growling. While he messed with the engines and the fuel cells and the broken parts that used to run but hadn’t exactly been built to last, he almost forgot about Spock—until, now and then, a spark against his fingertips reminded him of the shocks he’d felt in Spock’s ship-for-one and Jim was hit by it all over again.

He swung by a farmstand on his way back home for lunch, picking up some vegetables. He checked in on Spock but he was still in what could only be described as a trance state. But his color was better. Greener and less yellow. Jim locked the door on his way out, hearing Frank shuffling around upstairs, dropping something, cursing about it.

The second half of Jim’s day passed in a blur. Jim put on gloves when his hands got too sore to keep going with the finer details. There was being a tough guy and then there was singeing himself bad enough that he wouldn’t be able to work the next day—and Jim at least liked to pretend he knew the difference between the two.

The deck was already stacked against him. Jim didn’t need to go making anything harder on himself and he’d run out of people to prove himself to, anyway.

Unless you counted an ancient Vulcan who’d lapsed into a supposedly-healing coma on his couch.

Which Jim didn’t.

He’d kinda hoped the whole thing was a bad dream, just some massive hallucination cooked up from the fumes of that crazy ship while it was burning. But when Jim tugged off his thick work gloves, the older burns from the night before were still there, staining the tips of his fingers pink under the black oil streaks, and when he got home there were fresh veggies untouched on the table.

‘Didn’t your mom ever tell you to eat your greens?’ Jim asked.

There was no reply, but he hadn’t been expecting one. The art of conversation wasn’t something that required a partner. Sometimes its best use was filling up space in a dimly-lit room that’d been too small for one person; it was definitely too small for two.

‘Spock.’ Jim tried again after he’d settled, boots up on the second chair in his little kitchen, draining half a bottle of water in one go. It started to sweat almost as soon as he’d gotten it out of the fridge, beads of condensation rising and trickling down over Jim’s split knuckles. ‘Everybody’s gotta eat.’

Jim didn’t know much about Vulcans but he understood the basic laws of matter and energy; the former had to be consumed for the latter to exist.

Whatever Spock was doing to heal himself, he couldn’t keep it up indefinitely without topping up the fuel in his tank.

From where he was sitting, Jim could only see the back of Spock’s gray head and the stiff, square set of his shoulders set against the rise of the old couch. Jim watched him from under lidded eyes, twirling his water bottle by the neck against the table, leaving sweeping water rings all over the tarnished wood.

‘Lemme guess,’ he said after an appropriate amount of time had passed. ‘You’re not a zucchini fan.’

Spock’s posture had already been rigid, but Jim could tell the moment he came around. It was something about the way he held himself, spine stretching out like a length of wire that’d been tightly coiled. It didn’t seem like waking up—not exactly. It was more like Spock had been somewhere else and now he wasn’t.

Now, he was back.

Even in Jim’s head, before being shared with the class, it sounded stupid. Whatever; it wasn’t like there were any Vulcan experts around to correct him. Except for Spock, of course, and Jim wasn’t about to ask.

‘What is the current time?’ Spock asked.

Jim glanced at the digital readout on the fridge. ‘A quarter after six.’

‘And the current star date,’ Spock added.

That one threw Jim for a loop. He made a face where Spock couldn’t see it; as far as he knew, Vulcans still hadn’t adapted to grow eyes in the backs of their heads.

‘Twenty-two fifty-eight,’ Jim said. ‘Point four two. You didn’t slip and hit your head while I was out, did you?’

‘No; I did not.’ Spock finally stretched, just a pinch of his narrow shoulders building tension and realigning with gravity, then started to stand. ‘The restorative trance has considerable value, but it is still hindered by its own limits—one of which being that it requires a stationary position maintained at all times. I have not risen since the previous night, and now I am to understand we are well into the evening of the one that followed.’

‘Yeah.’ Jim watched Spock carefully, pretending that wasn’t what was up. He didn’t need green stains all over his furniture just because Spock thought he could meditate his wounds away alongside the pain. ‘So you slept the day away. It happens.’

‘Jim.’ Spock rested his hands on the back of Jim’s unoccupied kitchen chair. Anyone else might’ve taken that as a cue to get their boots off it, but Jim didn’t budge. His chair; his boots. His decision. ‘I must get to Starfleet Headquarters.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Jim replied. ‘Well, maybe you should’ve crashed  a little closer to San Francisco if it was that important. Right now you’re in Iowa, which might just be the farthest place on Earth from Starfleet HQ there is.’

‘Technically, that is not correct,’ Spock said, ‘yet I assume you are employing a...’ Spock paused. ‘...colorful metaphor, in a manner of speaking.’ He paused again. Whatever was going on behind his dark eyes, Jim had no clue. All he knew was that it was something—which went against most of what he knew, even if the information was second hand, about Vulcans and emotions and expressions, or rather the lack thereof. ‘If the current star date is twenty-two fifty-eight point four two, that would make you twenty-five years old.’ This time, when Spock blinked, Jim almost felt like it was pointed somehow. Personal. ‘What are you doing here, in Iowa?’

Jim snorted. It was either that or bristle, but he’d run out of fuel for the latter reaction years ago. ‘Believe me, old man, you’re not the first person to think up _that_ question, and you won’t be the last.’ He left out the part where he was at the top of the list of people who asked it—so often, in fact, that it stopped being a question and factored in with everything else a body took for granted. Like breathing, sleeping, digesting food, sweating when it was hot, shivering when it was cold.

‘Then I trust you have come to a conclusion as to its best answer?’

Jim snorted again, rolled his eyes, and forced the tensing muscles in his calves, in his shoulders, to relax. ‘This is where _I_ crash-landed, myself. And, unlike _some_ people, I didn’t have a friendly, dumbass stranger to haul _my_ ass out.’

Spock’s eyebrows, pointy as they were, furrowed just enough in the middle that Jim definitely had to assume the guy was no standard, run-of-the-mill, purged of all emotions Vulcan type. Stereotypes weren’t always true, but Jim had seen enough of country hicks to recognize they always had a common denominator, a grain of truth you could recognize at least on the most general level. ‘I do not understand.’

‘This is Iowa,’ Jim said. ‘The best conversation you can get here? Is with the _corn_. But it’s not like Starfleet just hands out scholarships to every orphan who wants the fast track out of their small town life, all right?’ Jim gripped his water bottle tight in both hands. The sides were still wet with condensation but no longer cool, his fingers and palms warming it up and leaving fingerprints all over the translucent sides. ‘Don’t get to Earth much, do you? Guess you don’t know how it works down here.’

‘I have been to this planet on many occasions,’ Spock replied. ‘However, I am beginning to develop a working hypothesis as to why it is unrecognizable to me—one which shall require further data before it is sound. Nevertheless, it does not preclude the truth of my earlier statement. I must get to Starfleet Headquarters in San Francisco. The sooner, the better.’

‘OK.’ Jim flipped the bottle over onto its side, regretting those vegetables now more than ever. They hadn’t come cheap and Spock was crazy and this was it, the slap in the face he got for sticking his neck out. Again. There were days when he knew he wasn’t as stupid as Frank kept saying he was when he was a kid—but there were days when he wondered if this wasn’t exactly what Frank’d meant all along.

Pulling the same cock-eyed stunts. Expecting different results.

If it wasn’t the definition of idiot, then it _was_ the definition of crazy.

‘Have a nice trip,’ Jim added. ‘Hope you get lucky hitching it out west. I’m sure you can find a few suckers willing to take pity on you. Bleed a little. Odds are equal you’ll run into a soft case as you’ll hit somebody who knows what to do when they smell blood in the water.’

‘You believe the odds are equal, Jim?’

Jim put his feet flat against the floor and leaned forward on the table, doing his best to match Spock’s impenetrable gaze. It wasn’t easy. Jim could feel the hairs on the back of his neck prickling but he wasn’t backing down; Spock didn’t have to know, didn’t have to get cocky that he’d won.

‘Sure,’ Jim said. ‘Glass isn’t half full and it isn’t half empty.’

‘Had you considered what your influence would be, should you act to change those odds?’ Spock asked.

Jim held up his hands. ‘Thought you needed to get to San Francisco, old man. Talking about personal outlooks with a hick mechanic in Iowa sure isn’t gonna get you there.’

‘On the contrary. I now suspect it is vital not only that I get to Starfleet Headquarters, but that you, Jim, must go with me.’

‘And about that.’ Jim was definitely sweating over the staring contest they were having but he’d come this far and he knew how to dig his heels in. ‘You _still_ haven’t told me how you knew _my_ name. Vulcan telepathic _whatever_ isn’t supposed to work like that.’

At last, Spock sighed. ‘This will be easier if I simply show you,’ he said, and took a step forward.

‘The hell?’

Jim lurched back in his chair, not hard enough to tip it. He was big enough now that he didn’t have to be scared of anyone and _definitely_ not some old Vulcan who was taller than he was, but the sudden movement still spurred an equally sudden reaction.

‘Don’t touch me,’ he warned, but Spock’s hand was already up, fingers parted at the center to press in hard against Jim’s cheek and jaw.

He didn’t have soft old man hands. His grip was strong—and that was just about the last thing Jim registered before the dizziness struck. If he hadn’t been sitting, he’d have fallen down. Jim didn’t feel faint as much as completely disoriented, like certain vital parts of him that he’d always counted on to be there suddenly weren’t anymore.

It was like he wasn’t the one running the show under his own skin. It was like someone—or something—had crawled inside him and made a cozy little home for itself in the center of his brain.

There were parasites that did that, both alien and terran. Jim’d read about those, too: the dangers of space and the dangers lurking right here in their own backyard. A guy didn’t have to join up with Starfleet to encounter weird and wonderful wildlife, but he probablystill had to get out of Iowa.

When Jim thought about Iowa this time, there was a distant fondness attached to it—an association he’dnever made, since he’d never had the distance to get fond in the first place.

That was the start of it, the first drop of rain in a flashflood of images that poured over Jim’s conscious mind, surging in through the connection Spock had opened.

Jim struggled to remember how Vulcan telepathy worked, but he could only remember that it required touch. His brain buckled and surged under the weight of images, memories and emotions that weren’t his own. He saw a guy who looked a lot like Spock standing straight-backed behind the captain’s chair on a starship. He knew it was Spock because even younger, dark-haired and in the simple blues of Starfleet’s science division, he had the same line between his brows—not as prominent, but still severe.  

The image rippled and changed: Spock and the captain fighting, wrestling on the sands of some distant planet; Spock and the captain running down the length of a starship’s corridor; Spock throwing the captain onto a table, then over it; Spock grabbing the captain by the arms and spinning him around. They shared a hundred glances, little looks that spanned months of occasions, voyages, and Starfleet assignments. Their expressions flickered through Jim’s head like images on a broken vidscreen, freezing in place and jumping ahead, never going back to fill in the blanks.

If it had only been the pictures in his head, maybe he could’ve taken it. But it was the accompanying surge of emotions that turned Jim’s stomach, made him feel like he’d swallowed fossil fuels and now they were corroding his insides, burning their way out again. They rushed into him alongside the images, feelings that weren’t his own because they weren’t his memories that brought them. They belonged to moments in time and space that’d never happened to him.

There was affection; amusement; a deep, nostalgic ache that anchored everything in place, its force so heavy that it almost dragged Jim down, seeking to bury him beneath it.

He tried to fight the tide, focusing on the information instead of the sentiment, turning on his brain and shutting off his heart. Jim was no telepath but that didn’t mean he had to be an open, raw nerve either, accepting everything because Spock was unloading it on him.

The captain had a name. Jim. It came up again and again, leaving Jim with the same prickling awareness he felt hearing what he’d always thought of as _his_ name, now used to refer to someone else.

 _I am from another time._ That was Spock’s voice, the Spock _he_ knew, if only for a short time, weathered with age and absent his crew. _And, I begin to suspect, another universe altogether._

‘Bullshit.’ Jim heard his own voice but didn’t feel his mouth move.

_The technology of my ship was unrecognizable to you. It is far more advanced than anything that exists in your present time._

Jim struggled through twice the memories. It was like that fight on the sand he kept catching glimpses of, heat like nothing he’d known, blood turning to fever, grains of sand slipping under his knees like water. ‘Your ship’s not the only one.’ For a moment, Jim could feel the press of Spock’s fingertips as distinct points of contact—before the specificity, the anchor, drifted away again and the riptide sucked his feet out from under him. ‘There was another—’

_Yes. Nero’s ship. It was a mistake I made. I arrived too late to save his planet from destruction. And in return..._

Jim had never wanted to know why the Romulans had appeared one day without warning in a ship that was too powerful to explain, much less defeat, to do what they’d done.

They’d come. They’d killed his parents. They’d destroyed an entire planet. They’d taken down half of Starfleet’s finest in the field and—even if it was a small detail in the face of the galaxy’s loss—they’d marooned Jim in Iowa without an escape pod. It was nothing more than collateral damage. It didn’t matter why. It would never matter, beyond the fact that it’d happened.

But now, Jim knew. He saw a world engulfed by a dying star from the best seat in the house: peering over Spock’s shoulder in the front row, close enough to the blast that the heat flared along his skin. He felt the pain of a telepathic mind faced with the obliteration of thousands of lives so close to the heart of the loss.

It ricocheted through him like heat lightning, grounding itself in his bones.

 _I have reason to believe he is waiting—waiting for me to appear._ Spock’s voice felt the same sorrow and it was too much; the Romulans in Jim’s universe didn’t deserve sorrow, but he was mourning them despite himself. _Nero began his revenge to set the stage for a single guest to observe what followed. Now that this guest will be able to witness the rest of his plans unfold—and as Nero already possesses a weapon capable of unimaginable damage—even I, knowing his dedication to the task of making me pay, cannot fathom what atrocity he will commit next. Starfleet must be warned of the danger, Jim. Vulcan was not my only home. I am half-human. I am also a child of Earth._

Anger—that was Jim’s. He recognized it; it was the only thing he did. The rest was a mess of sparking nerves like raw transistor coils, like the chaos in Spock’s downed ship. The memories slipped backward; they didn’t follow a single pattern and Jim couldn’t duck or dodge. Moments of comprehension, lost in time. A thousand little revelations of purpose, of understanding, just as unstable as sand, just as continually shifting. They filled every emptiness Jim had lived in for twenty-five years and every emptiness he hadn’t known was there until he knew how empty he was because he wasn’t empty, not anymore.

Then, like that, with the sound of a chuckle he didn’t recognize and his own name spoken for someone else on Spock’s lips— _Jim_ , holding the same resonance as _captain_ , but also something more—it receded, pulled back at once. Gone, like it’d never existed.

Only Jim knew it did.

He stumbled away from Spock’s hand; he hadn’t even realized he’d been standing. His calves hit the side of the table and he dropped heavily against it, knees buckling, head in his hands. His palms were wet from more than sweat, although he was sweating too, heavily under his arms and down his chest. When he blinked, his vision blurred. He could still see the shadows passing over his eyelids, hear the echoes between his ears.

‘Jesus.’ Jim’s voice sounded like hell. He thought he was supposed to recognize it but instead, it sounded like the other guy—the one Spock had known. _James T. Kirk. Captain. Jim._ ‘What’d you _do_ to me?’

‘Emotional transference,’ Spock said quietly. ‘A side-effect of the mind-meld. It will fade, given sufficient time.’

Jim tried to laugh but it came out like a snort, maybe like a sob. He had to wipe his nose with the back of his hand, snuffling like he was a kid again and Frank’d found him in the garage messing with the engines under the hood of his convertible. His fingers stung and a few, final flashes of bright light crossed his vision. There was one thing at the center, the eye of a hurricane, that he couldn’t escape and wouldn’t forget and couldn’t imagine fading no matter how much time he was given. A pain that didn’t have to do with the body. A darkness. An emptiness. Jim didn’t know how he knew, but he was sure of what it was.

Death.

After naming it, Jim remembered how to breathe again. He realized his shoulders were hunched and he eased them out, scrubbing at the sweat off his neck, raking his fingers through his hair.

His hands were shaking.

He bolted for the bathroom before he’d truly registered the feeling in his gut, a sudden shift in momentum as his esophageal muscles worked a reverse path. Jim retched a couple times, shoulders slumped over the toilet like he’d had a drink too many in one of the little roadside dive bars that were scattered along Riverside’s main roads.

Some nights, that year’s cadets would hit them up before shipping out at the local launch point. Jim always seemed to cross paths with them, either to pick someone up or to start a fight, depending on where his mouth got him.

Jim coughed, leaning his cheek on his forearm before he could sit back for real and take stock of the revolt happening with his own body. He’d got the other Jim out of him— _maybe_ , for the time being. He couldn’t figure yet whether he needed to be embarrassed by his reaction or whether that’d been a natural bodily function, his insides unable to deal with more than one James T. Kirk occupying the same physical space.

Well, not _exactly_ the same space.

From what Jim had glimpsed, the two of them had obviously different silhouettes.

He put his hand to his belly just to double-check, feeling the muscles jump under the thin cotton fabric of his stained t-shirt. Yeah. There was no Starfleet captain’s gut there. He was still himself.

But he didn’t _feel_ like himself, half collapsed on the floor and hiding in his own damn bathroom. From this vantage point, Jim could tell the tiles needed scrubbing. It was one of those things he planned but never got around to—like getting his ass onto the first shuttle in the shipyard and flying out of Iowa.

Jim’s stomach roiled and he rubbed his hand over it in slow circles, coming back to himself with the familiar, repetitive gesture.

When he stood, he rinsed out his mouth and spat into the sink, splashed water on his cheeks, then checked over his face in the dirty mirror hanging on the wall. He poked the skin around his eyes—still blue—and tried to smile that big, goofy, happy grin he’d seen on Captain Kirk.

It made Jim look queasy, which he was, and insane, which he might’ve been well on his way to.

Spock hadn’t even come to check on him, which Jim figured was for the best. He didn’t have the first clue about how to behave in front of him now; whenever he tried to work it out he got tripped up on his own anger and beyond that was plain confusion.

Because it wasn’t Jim alone who’d had his guts ripped out by whatever Spock had done. Those memories had been way more personal to Spock than they had been to Jim. It couldn’t have been as simple, as easy, as watching a movie for him, and if seeing all that play out had made _Jim_ wanna puke, he couldn’t imagine what it would’ve done if he’d actually known everyone in those images the way Spock had known them.

‘Emotional transference, my ass,’ Jim muttered.

Spock was full of shit if he thought that’d made anything about his predicament easier to understand.

Jim _had_ learned a couple things, though.

He turned on the taps until the water ran properly cold, splashing more of it on his face to tamp down the heat radiating from his skin. If Spock knew something, _anything,_ about Nero and where he’d come from, then he was sitting on valuable information. True, there was the chance he was just some lunatic, that it was all in his head—but then again, Jim had seen things in his head that no one would’ve been able to create out of thin air. If he understood the mind meld, it meant Spock had _lived_ that. Whether he was telling the entire truth or not remained to be seen, but if he knew where Nero had come from, then just maybe he might have some ideas on how to send him back there. How to stop him.

How to kick his ass.

And if that was true, then Jim had a responsibility to get him to Starfleet. So that Spock could be held accountable for bringing Nero down on the rest of them, if nothing else.

He’d found his legs underneath him by the time he came out of the bathroom to find Spock standing in exactly the same place he’d been when Jim left. Fled was more like it, but the assault of raw, Vulcan emotion hadn’t been something life’d prepared Jim for.

He swallowed, searching for his voice. It was down there in his chest somewhere and he had to force it to come out sounding like him instead of like somebody else—who just so happened to be somebody he’d never even met.

‘Always thought you guys weren’t supposed to have emotions,’ he managed, voice scratchy. He wished he could’ve sounded older—but maybe he was still comparing himself to the guy calling out orders on the bridge. Not a fair standard by any means.

‘A common misconception,’ Spock replied. ‘You are not the first to assume its veracity, nor can I assume will you be the last.’

His face didn’t register a damn thing. It was solid as weathered rock—old, yeah, but calm. He’d found peace despite everything Jim knew was going on inside of him, everything he’d experienced thanks to a mental handshake that’d left him feeling emptier than ever. So Spock had everything. The deep stuff, the rough stuff, the gutting stuff, the love and the loss, and on top of that, he was okay with it. He had it all figured it out.

Jim’s jaw had tightened somewhere around the correction and now the joints were aching.

‘There aren’t too many of you around here to test its veracity on,’ he pointed out, maybe too harshly. If it was the only way to keep his voice from shaking like his hands had been, then so be it. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, over here—after the mistake you said _you_ made—Vulcan doesn’t exactly exist anymore.’

Jim waited, looking for something, any of the things he knew Spock could feel, to register in his expression. But it didn’t change; of course it didn’t. He had that under control, too.

And Jim knew better than to call it a lack of feeling. It was the opposite, a wealth of feeling. Jim would’ve been better off back in the bathroom puking his guts out more until there really was nothing left inside of him than facing this guy down after seeing what he’d seen.  

‘Indeed,’ Spock said at last. ‘In the interest of preventing further tragedy, it is vital that I share what I know of Nero and his methods with those who have the means to stand against him.’

‘Yeah.’ Jim swallowed. ‘And the Federation oughta know a little something about why everything went to hell so fast, too. That there was a reason—even if it was, what was it? Your mistake.’ Breathing was easy, Jim reminded himself. It was supposed to be like shifting a clutch on an antique, test-driving it at midnight before he had to return the keys to the real owner. He flexed the knuckles of his right hand, still sore and bruised from the night before, as stiff as the knot of anger at the base of his spine.

‘Indeed,’ Spock said again.

 _Indeed_. His voice was deep and rolled through the echoing places between Jim’s ribs

‘So don’t complain if we drive there in a pickup,’ Jim added. ‘A bumpy ride’s all you’re gonna get. I’ve got some stuff to take care of before we can head out.’

Spock nodded. On him, it was almost like a thank you—except that it wasn’t a thank you at all, Jim reminded himself. It was just a damn nod.

‘I will wait,’ he said.

Jim shrugged and waved over his shoulder half-heartedly. He was grateful to leave Spock behind, to get some fresh air, but it wasn’t as though he was heading toward company that was any better than what he was leaving behind.

He’d never been able to get as much air as his lungs needed when Frank was in the room.

*


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spock Prime road trip.

Uncle Frank was a far cry from the man he’d been, the man Jim remembered, the man he still saw whenever he closed his eyes. Broad-shouldered, bull-chested, sucking up all the oxygen not just in the room but in the state whenever his shadow fell across the threshold of an open doorway—Frank had been worse than what Jim’d imagined meeting hostile Klingons in space would be like, worse than any monsters that might’ve been hiding under the bed. Jim would’ve taken a Gorn in the closet any day over Frank in the living room, holding a sweating bottle of beer and listening for the slightest sound of something upstairs being dropped or tipped over.

Now, Frank was old and it showed. For every knock he’d given somebody else between the ears, there’d been an equal effect on him—at least, Jim liked to think of it that way, as though there was anything remotely fair about the way actions balanced out in the universe—and these days, he left Jim alone on account of not remembering to shout at him.

He still knew his way around under the hood of an automobile. He still knew what was his and what wasn’t. It was his grip on who _he_ was that kept slipping.

Most of the time, it was like living with the ghost of a bad feeling. And compared to living with feeling bad, Jim’d take it.

He passed behind Frank’s old chair, the one he’d never been able to sit in, avoiding the creaky floorboard that always squeaked no matter how light on your feet you were.

‘Heading out,’ Jim said. ‘Might not be back for a while.’

Frank’s shoulders were still wide but they didn’t matter as much as they used to; it had something to do with the way he’d forgotten how to hold them. Still, at the sound of Jim’s voice, they tensed. Frank turned, slowly, until Jim saw him in profile, a broken nose and a half-open mouth. If Jim squinted, he was still the same bastard who only had to reach for his belt to get Jim to sit up straight in his chair.

‘What’s that?’ Frank asked.

Jim balled his hands into fists—then forced them to relax. ‘See you, Frank,’ he said. ‘I’m getting out of here. I’m blowing this town.’

‘Sure you are,’ Frank replied.

‘I’m heading out to the coast.’ Jim barreled on, pretending he couldn’t hear. Knowing that this was the last time in a while he was gonna have to deal with Frank’s bullshit went a long way toward acting as motivation, greasing the gears. ‘Probably wind up as far as San Francisco. You’ve got my number if you need me.’

‘Yeah?’ Frank said. ‘When pigs fly, maybe.’

That was when he’d need Jim.

Well, at least the feeling was mutual.

‘Whatever,’ Jim said. ‘Just don’t burn the house down while I’m gone.’

That’d nearly happened once, when Jim was fourteen and getting the height but not the weight he needed to stand up to Frank. He’d come home to find the guy passed out with a lit cigarette burning a hole in the rug where it’d dropped from between his prone fingers.

For a couple of seconds, suspended in time like Frank’s limp arm over the rest of his favorite chair, Jim considered backing out of the room: letting nature take its course, accepting the hand of fate, whatever. The lit edges of the burning carpet glowed in a widening circle, flaring and ebbing like a dying coal. They’d catch eventually, turn into a real fire with real smoke. It wouldn’t matter which got Frank first. Nothing woke him when he was out for the night.

But when Jim thought about leaving, letting orange flames lick their way up the sides of the old farmhouse until they’d consumed it whole, until there was nothing left, he got a cold, heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach, like three-day old dinner.

He couldn’t let that happen to the house he’d grown up in. It wasn’t what Mom would’ve wanted, or Dad, or even Sam, even though all three of them had gotten the hell out of Riverside in one way or another. They’d left Jim behind, but that didn’t mean he was without responsibilities. Someone had to hold down the fort, even if in this case the fort was Earth.

He’d cleaned up the cigarette, pulled the standing table over about two inches to cover the hole, and never said two words about it in the morning—or ever.

Jim did all the cleaning anyway; there wasn’t much of a chance for Frank to uncover the thing.

Frank waved Jim off without looking around, dismissive as ever now that Jim wasn’t any kind of target to lash out at. Being ignored stung in a different way from having to creep around the house so he wouldn’t draw attention.

Jim wasn’t stupid enough to act like he didn’t prefer one over the other. Bruises were more than a pain in the ass.

Anyway, he’d done his due diligence, letting Frank know where he was headed. For better or worse, they were both on their own for now. Jim wouldn’t wager a guess as to which of them was gonna fare better. Jim might’ve been a farmtown hick from Iowa heading nowhere fast with a crazy Vulcan but at least he had youth on his side.

It was small, practically microscopic, but under these circumstances, he’d settle for any advantage he could get.

He left a note on the fridge for later when Frank forgot about the conversation. Maybe when Frank forgot about Jim completely. Like it was that easy to forget—Frank being the one who’d cast the shadow, Jim being the one who’d been eclipsed.

Spock was still waiting by the time he’d cut back outside and tromped down the front steps to the basement door. He hadn’t packed because he didn’t have any luggage. He was wearing the same gray robes Jim’d found him in, creases and folds hanging in such a way that Jim couldn’t spot any of the green stains from his blood—unless there was some kind of trick he’d pulled to clean those while Jim wasn’t looking.

Vulcan Laundry Trance. Something like that.

It was as likely as anything else Jim’d run up against in the past two days.

‘You have made arrangements for our travel?’ Spock asked.

‘I told you,’ Jim said, ‘we’re riding in style.’

His dad’s old Corvette Stingray to be precise. Frank had appropriated it after George Kirk had gone and got himself killed, but Jim figured he must’ve inherited the thing by now. Bought and paid for through the time he’d done just sticking it out in Riverside. Besides, a car like that was meant to be driven and they’d already established Frank wasn’t going much of anywhere these days.

‘Ah,’ Spock said—one hell of an understatement—as Jim tugged off the dusty tarp that’d been thrown over the car, keeping it safe but also keeping it tied down. No one’d used it to fly like it deserved in years; Jim still remembered sneaking in after Frank was asleep to sit across from it, lifting an edge of the tarp to run his knuckles along the paintjob, not his fingers, so he wouldn’t leave any tell-tale fingerprints.

‘Ah?’ Jim looked over his shoulder, fingers lingering on the pinched leather curve of the steering wheel. ‘That’s all you’ve got to say about a beauty like this? Don’t try to tell me it’s not up to snuff.’

‘I had considered the possibilities of our future journey,’ Spock replied, ‘and, given the options of transportation methods, this automobile _is_ preferable to your motorcycle.’

Jim snorted and shook his head, nabbing the keys out of the glove box, tossing his backpack into the back seat and hopping over the side to slide in behind the wheel. He leaned over to unlock the passenger door, then turned the keys in the ignition while Spock got in to ride shotgun.

After that, it was only a matter of putting up the convertible top, creaky and starting to split with age, dust shivering down on them as it unfurled overhead.

Jim glanced across at Spock to see if he had any further complaints, but he’d settled in nice and easy, posture perfect, looking so out of place that Jim almost felt like laughing. He steadied his palms on the steering wheel, tightening his grip until his knuckles ached.

‘Jim,’ Spock said.

Jim revved the engine. ‘That’s my name. You looking to wear it out?’

Spock’s pause was a mystery Jim didn’t have even a fraction of enough training to figure out—but that didn’t stop him from butting his head against it anyway, if only because he knew it was there. ‘Are you properly educated in the operation of such a vehicle?’

‘ _Jesus. Now’s_ not the time you should be asking.’ Jim forced his mouth into something that might’ve been a shade or two off a grin and settled in place, foot on the gas. It figured he’d have to start his way out of Iowa in reverse, backing out of the garage and down the driveway, until he swung a quick u-turn and found himself facing forward for once.

‘The question has now been proven irrelevant,’ Spock said. ‘It is clear that your abilities are adequate in this area.’

Frank’s house was small in the distance behind them when Jim realized what that particular statement meant. He sucked in a breath, chest filling with fresh air.

‘So, this other Jim Kirk—he couldn’t drive, huh?’

‘He was a man of many talents.’ Spock’s hair was barely ruffled by the wind, threads of gray more obvious in the fading daylight. Jim looked away fast. ‘However, the operation of antique automobiles was not among them.’

‘Guess he was too busy being perfect at everything else for it to matter. Not much time to practice a stick shift when you’re the captain of a starship, is there?’ Jim hung a sharp right but nothing, it seemed, could catch Spock by surprise. ‘What would he say if he could hear you talking crap about his driving skills, anyway?’

Spock’s silence hung like the dust in the air that refused to settle long after the wheels of the Stingray tore up the dirt.

‘To answer that question,’ Spock replied at last, ‘would require the natural inclination to ‘make’ a guess.’

‘Seems to me you knew the guy well enough it wouldn’t be hard to throw one out there,’ Jim said.

‘My health is not optimal even now.’ Spock didn’t blink at his own non-sequitur but it wasn’t like riding with a statue, not at all. Jim’s fingers tingled against the steering wheel, which made him realize he was still gripping it too tight. ‘I require further time devoted to a healing trance. Trust that my silence is not intended as commentary on the quality of your conversation, Jim.’

‘Sure,’ Jim muttered.

Spock was quiet after that, the rhythm of his even breaths barely audible over the grunting of the engine. That was a relief, since listening to it for too long would’ve lulled Jim to sleep. Jim stopped in town before the highway to top up on gas, calling in an old favor with the attendant on call for a twofer deal on a full tank and a digital map of the quickest route to San Francisco.

‘Wouldn’t you like to know,’ he replied, forking over the last cash he had for the discounted price, in reply to the question _Who the hell’s the old guy with the pointy ears?_

It wasn’t like Jim could answer the question for himself.

_This crazy Vulcan from an alternate future who’s the reason why we don’t have one_ was too harsh and not exactly informative. Jim adjusted the rearview mirror and acclimatized himself to the same eerie lack of a response, the weight of another person in the car with him without the weight of conversation to drive with them.

It was better this way, Jim told himself.

They didn’t have much to talk about.

But Jim was ready for Spock when he finally opened his eyes, six hours later—Jim’s stomach grumbling, his hair messed up from the wind, driving over the speed limit and gaining the farther he got from Riverside. Once he’d crossed state lines out of Iowa, Riverside became so small it might as well not’ve existed.

‘You hungry?’ Jim asked.

‘Sustenance is not currently required,’ Spock said. ‘But your concern is duly noted.’

‘Sure.’ Jim kept his eyes on the road. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not gonna try and feed you zucchini again.’

He pulled into a crappy drive-thru anyway, getting a burger and fries for himself and relinquishing the vanilla milkshake to Spock when he expressed interest.

‘This straw is inadequate in conducting the liquid from its vessel,’ Spock said.

‘Yeah,’ Jim said. ‘Triple thick.’

Conversation died down after that, which was fine by Jim since there wasn’t much to discuss. He kept one hand on the wheel, shoveled food into his mouth with the other. Spock drank half his milkshake then stuck it in the cup holder, lapsing into another trance.

Or maybe this time it was a nap. Damned if Jim knew the difference.

They had a ways to go. Jim’d clocked about thirty hours total for the trip if they made regular stops for food and gas and maybe shut-eye. He’d done more meticulous work on no sleep than driving, though, and he wasn’t looking to shell out for a motel for himself and the old guy.

Still, thirty hours was a long time to spend in the car with a maybe, sort-of prisoner. Jim could cut it down to twenty-seven if traffic wasn’t bad along what was once I-80 west. They’d renamed it some commemorative thing after one of the Starfleet flagships that’d gone down alongside Vulcan, but NCC-1647 USS Farragut Expressway was kind of a mouthful, so most people stuck to calling it the I-80.

Whatever Spock thought of the scenery, he kept it to himself, all the way through Nebraska and into Wyoming. There wasn’t much to comment on: just endless, flat country, roads and fields that seemed to stretch out into forever, marred by the odd housing complex. Jim didn’t get how the population boom hadn’t capitalized on all these free, empty spaces, but deep down he figured he knew. Everyone was sticking to the coast, either of them, where opportunities were around every corner. No one was looking to get squeezed out in the middle of nowhere no matter how crowded their big cities got.

It was probably for the best that Spock had nothing to say, because there were little reminders of Nero’s influence everywhere, littering the sparse signposts and dotting the darkening country fields.

Now that Jim knew who to blame for them, he was having a hard time not taking it out on the guy.

It wasn’t as if that would accomplish anything. Jim might’ve had a smart mouth—might’ve been the first and last thing people noticed about him—but the head on his shoulders wasn’t half-bad, either. He got that Spock couldn’t change anything now, that he’d become just another victim of circumstance the second he’d come through the void after Nero. There was no sense dragging it out here in the car with hours and hours of road ahead of them.

Jim didn’t have the authority to hold Spock accountable for it anyway.

Starfleet HQ would. Once they got there, whatever Spock thought he had to say, he could own up to his responsibilities at the same time.

Jim took his hands off the wheel to fiddle with the knobs on the old radio, never quite turning it on. Mixed feelings about Spock aside, the guy wasn’t napping for no reason. Jim could interrupt his beauty rest without a guilty conscience, but a healing trance or whatever—that was another matter. There were rules about prisoner conduct, even after Nero showed up and changed the game for everyone.

Jim didn’t want him arriving as damaged goods. It might interfere with the administration of justice.

It was well after sunset, bright streetlights flooding the open road, when Spock finally opened his eyes again. Jim was pushing his boundaries, more than willing to drive well into the night if it meant he could avoid having anything to do with sacking out in the backseat. Spock seemed relatively benign, but maybe that was the impression he’d been looking to give off. Maybe he was just waiting for Jim to make one wrong move, slip up and let down his guard.

If anyone had the patience for a long game like that, it _would_ be a Vulcan.

‘We aren’t there yet.’

Jim figured it was best to get the facts out of the way. He had no clue what a healing trance was like, whether or not Spock would be disoriented coming out of it. Experience had taught him to assume nothing and plan ahead because no one was gonna do the grunt work for him.

‘Indeed,’ Spock said. ‘I am aware of this due to the minimal yet still mildly informative signage.’

Jim mouthed the word and rolled his eyes and rolled his shoulders at the same time. They were tense, knotted up from being hunched forward while he kept his hands on the wheel. ‘Yeah. _Mildly informative_. That’s Earth for you in a nutshell.’ Jim sucked in a tight breath through clenched teeth. The question he was about to ask had been building since _Leaving Riverside, Iowa_ had flashed alongside them, disappearing into the background. ‘So—where you’re from. Did this Jim Kirk you knew have _his_ folks around, or what?’

Spock didn’t miss a beat. It must’ve been all those hours devoted to healing himself that made things easy, or at least made them look easy; if Jim’d ever been able to sit still instead of going all kinds of nowhere fast, he would’ve been looking to learn that trick for himself. ‘You often spoke highly of your father. You cited him as your inspiration for joining Starfleet—and he lived to see you become captain of the Enterprise.’

Jim laughed, close to choking on it. ‘Captain of the Enterprise. Of _course_. What a fairytale.’

‘It was a position to which you are uniquely suited. Having been acquainted with multiple parallel universes,’ Spock added, ‘analysis of the evidence would suggest all individuals in every timeline are possessed of the same basic qualities of nature, despite the distinctions in their nurture.’

‘No starships to captain in Riverside,’ Jim pointed out.

Spock inclined his head in response. Jim couldn’t tell if it was an agreement or a judgment or a social politeness or a bump in the road.

The conversation died again after that, along with the sunlight.

It was a little past four in the morning when Jim found a non-pay scenic viewpoint parking lot to pull over in. ‘Unless you’re looking to drive, old timer,’ he said, sliding over the lowered driver’s seat and into the back, the leather upholstery creaking and squeaking from the friction, ‘here’s where we stop for an hour or two. Not everybody can go into a healing trance when they’re running low on fuel.’

‘I shall maintain watch while you are unable to provide that security,’ Spock replied. ‘Despite your anomalous experiences to this point, I do not require nearly as much rest as the average human.’

‘As long as you don’t watch _me_ ,’ Jim said, ‘then I don’t care what the hell you do. Wake me once the sun comes up, all right?’

‘I shall do so, Jim.’

Jim fought off another eyeroll and instead turned up the collar on his jacket, pulling it halfway over his head to shield his eyes from any traffic lights that might pass them by. The scenic viewpoint was deserted and it was too dark to notice the scenery, anyway. No use in studying the place, since they’d be gone again by morning, which meant all Jim could see at first were the shadows inside the curve of beaten leather in the shoulder of his jacket, then black on the backs of his eyelids.

Somehow, doing nothing at all could make you bone tired; putting pavement in your rearview mirror made you even more tired than that. Jim didn’t have to wait too long for sleep to take over, although he never lost the point of tension at the base of his neck, clenched between his shoulders and tightening his jaw.

That could’ve been the reason for the dreams he had, too many of them in rapid succession to count—and all of them fitful, restless, incomplete. As dark as the world around Jim was, they were equal and opposite, bright flashes of light and laughter, hands touching hands, warmth and a half-familiar voice saying his name into the hot wind.

_Jim_.

There shouldn’t have been a difference in the sound of his name one way or another; a subtle alteration in inflection, a minor shift in intent, shouldn’t have been a private, personal metamorphosis. But the voice turned suddenly, roughened, gentled, and Jim saw moments in deserts he’d never been to or even looked at anywhere other than pictures, news bulletins, archives.

Heat on the sand and blistering the red rock; sunset in the distance; the shiver of bells. From an angle, Jim could see himself, older and satisfied, wiping sweat off the back of his neck, with crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes while he squinted against the wind and the grit. He turned; his face was broad, red-cheeked. Emotion—shared, more than what one guy was supposed to carry on his own—hit him under the ribs, above the pelvis, spiking deep, deeper, into the center of his gut. It coiled, heat around heat. They were holding hands; he was holding hands. Calluses pressed to fingertips; forefingers slid against each other; knuckles bumped knuckles.

_Jim_.

The voice echoed in the wind and was pulled away between far-off mountains. The coil of heat spiraled outward from the center. The shiver of bells grew louder.

_Spock_.

Jim’s eyes opened to a line of early sunlight above the black, tight square of heavy leather and torn lining slumped directly over the bridge of his nose. Jim could barely breathe.

‘Jim,’ Spock said.

Of course, it wasn’t the same. Jim grunted and shielded his eyes with one elbow, sliding out from under his jacket.

It was dawn, just like Spock’d promised. The hot wind was nothing more than Jim’s breath trapped against fabric and blowing back into his face.

He squirmed his way into a sitting position, the leather sticking to his skin as he pulled himself up. His t-shirt was rumpled around his stomach, the fabric wrinkled against his chest. He felt overdone, like someone’d stuck him in the oven and left it on too long.

But there was no one for Jim to blame but himself. Spock had woken him exactly when he’d said he would. If Jim was baking, burning up, then it was because of that dream and not the sun. His jeans felt tight around his hips, constricting the sudden blood flow that’d shifted downward while Jim was sleeping.

He cleared his throat and squeezed his thighs together, trying to get his head straight. They still had to cross from Utah to Nevada before they broke into California—and San Francisco was all the way on the coast. He had a lot of driving to do and no time to get caught up in any dumb dreams he’d been having.

His subconscious felt invaded, rife with feelings and memories Jim was sure weren’t his own. He’d haddreams like that before—who hadn’t?—but none of them felt quite as vivid.

And none of them had come into play after his very own Vulcan mind meld, either.

If Spock knew something was up, then he kept it to himself—and that was how Jim liked it. He crawled between the seats in an ungainly maneuver, landing in a heap in the driver’s seat behind the steering wheel. There was sweat cooling against the back of his neck and stiffening in his hair. Jim felt it shift with the rising wind. He turned the keys in the ignition and started up the car.

‘I trust your period of rest was satisfactory,’ Spock said.

‘As good as it’s gonna get,’ Jim replied.

He wasn’t in the mood for fancy banter or worse, good manners and a nice chat about their respective nights. He could still hear someone saying his name like it meant something, like it meant _everything._ That was a hard feeling to shake; it stuck to him like a second skin, like the sweat coating his flesh, and it made him feel tacky and damp despite the hot, dry desert air blowing over them.

It was gonna get cool again when they got near the coast. Jim couldn’t wait for the chance to let that heat leech out of his body, where it wouldn’t feel like an invading pathogen lurking in his blood.

It was his brain that was the problem. That, and the Vulcan riding shotgun.

‘You are unsettled,’ Spock said, somewhere before the long, golden stretches of countryside started to turn wild and green again, the sky bright-blue while the sun hid behind a few, hazy clouds.

Jim tightened his hands on the wheel and managed not to jerk it right or left. Hell yeah he was unsettled. He also wasn’t looking to talk about it. But San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge weren’t conveniently materializing out of the clouds for him, so it was either make awkward conversation or offer something up in return. Rock or hard place, no in between.

That was usually how Jim’s life worked. He couldn’t catch a break, even speeding toward it like his life depended on the thing.

‘Well, let’s go over the facts,’ Jim said. ‘I’m driving a Vulcan who crash-landed in my hometown out to Starfleet Headquarters because _he_ says he’s responsible for the biggest threat to human life since, I don’t know, humans themselves. You _do_ know Nero almost wiped out Earth, right? Because after Vulcan, he was gunning for us next. Starfleet had to get some super-genius in to cobble together a defense grid for our atmosphere. You wouldn’t’ve had anything to crash _into_ if we hadn’t pulled it off.’

‘You witnessed the events that lead to Nero’s arrival firsthand,’ Spock pointed out. ‘You did not require my word in order to believe them.’

‘Yeah, well, now that you mention it, that mind-meld of yours got me _plenty_ ‘unsettled’ too,’ Jim said. ‘You weren’t too concerned about that _before_ you went digging around in my head.’

Spock was silent for a couple of beats. ‘It was the most effective means of communicating my situation. If I have caused you any undue stress, then I must conclude an apology is in order.’

‘I’m not asking for sorries,’ Jim said.

Although what he _was_ asking for was less clear.

Knowing what you didn’t want was easy. Knowing what you did was hard. Jim dug his thumb into the spot over the bridge of his nose that answered the knot at the nape of his neck whenever he tensed up, but he always pushed too deep and never could get the right balance to make it feel better instead of worse.

‘If you have any requests,’ Spock began.

‘Could’ves, would’ves, should’ves.’ Jim shrugged it off, joints stiff under equally stiff leather. He was still carrying that night’s fever with him no matter how much the wind whipped around his face and snapped against his ears, no matter how much higher the sun got in the sky. ‘Doesn’t matter now _what_ my requests are.’

‘As I said earlier, emotional transference is a side effect of the mind meld. It is unusual that these effects would linger for so long, but neither is it unheard of.’

‘Glad to be the lucky one percent,’ Jim said.

Spock lifted an eyebrow but said nothing. The expression echoed in Jim’s lungs when he sucked in a quick breath like he recognized it, only he didn’t. Somebody else did. Jim scratched the sweat on his scalp curving around the back of his ear and messed up his hair up purpose, scalp stinging under his nails. That was when he finally stopped.

The road stretched out in front of them. San Francisco was closer than ever but still too damn far away.

Jim stepped on the gas and blew past the speed limit.

The sooner the road trip portion of proceedings was over, the better.

*


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a really long chapter and it took me a really long time to edit and I'm really sorry.

It wasn’t easy to ignore the lingering after-effects, still heavy in Jim’s stomach like food poisoning or the flu, but a brief stop at a gas station to top up and splash cold water on his face in the men’s restroom helped. It was like slapping a small strip of bandage plaster over a broken bone; at least it was something. Jim’s eyelashes were wet, his face barely recognizable between the flecks and stains on the mirror over the sink. His eyes were blue, bright blue, but when he blinked he kept seeing spots of hazel, something brown and warm and satisfied. A wider a jaw. A quicker grin.

The mouth was the same—until Jim’s twisted in a grimace and his stomach growled. He headed back outside, wiping his palms dry on the fronts of his jeans, and leaned over the side of the Stingray because it made him look relaxed, easy; it also propped him up on legs that felt like jelly after so much driving without a pause to stretch them out.

‘You hungry?’ he asked.

‘I do not require sustenance,’ Spock replied.

Jim snorted and shook his head. ‘Didn’t answer my question, old man. You answered something, but not what I asked.’

He thought he saw the corner of Spock’s mouth twitch—but maybe, like the guy staring back at him in the mirror, it was nothing more than a bleary illusion.

Jim grabbed some proteins inside when he paid for the gas and dropped one into Spock’s lap as he hopped back in the car. ‘Vegetarian,’ he said. The air smelled like gas. Spock’s long fingers rested briefly over the packaging without so much as a single crinkle before he peeled back the shrink wrap.

Jim bit open a corner on his, spitting it out over his shoulder. He saw it dance away silver on the wind before it was sucked down into the exhaust pipe and disappeared. He ate one-handed, watching Spock out of the corner of his eye.

‘Thank you, Jim,’ Spock said.

‘Yeah, don’t mention it. Can’t have you croaking before you get to Starfleet.’

After a moment’s pause, Spock replied, ‘Vulcans do not ‘croak’, Jim.’

‘Was that a joke?’ Jim asked.

Spock had no reply.

The conversation died more naturally than it ever began. Silence swallowed them as they passed through Death Valley—accurately named, though Jim’d always figured everything between Yosemite and Riverside should’ve been slapped with the same label. Truth in advertising. Spock didn’t comment on the scenery and they didn’t play any fun on-the-road games to pass the time, like pointing out license plates or naming Federation members alphabetically, one for each letter. Jim did that inside his head instead, going over things he’d learned when nobody was paying attention, sticking it out in the local library at one of the research terminals until he’d lost track of the time and got home past curfew, where real life grounded him.

He’d been looking to get to Yosemite before oh three hundred hit but there was no such luck. He parked behind a grocery store for the night and when he turned to Spock to say next verse, same as the first, Spock had already adjusted his posture. He was waiting for Jim, anticipating him.

‘I shall follow the regulations of the previous night,’ he said.

Jim turned his back on it to hide the weird shiver it gave him, down the length of his spine to the base, and scrambled into the backseat. ‘Didn’t realize you guys were touch-precogs on top of everything else.’

‘It was an inference based on logic,’ Spock replied.

‘Night, old man,’ Jim said, and pulled his jacket over his head.

Sleep didn’t come with the same instinctive relaxation; maybe Jim was bracing himself for another night like the one before. He’d known it was bound to be a pain in the ass—a pain in the chest, more like—but he didn’t know it could get any worse.

 _Jim_. Hands on shoulders, working out the tension in the muscles there, like it was that easy to share stress, and by sharing it, lessen it.

 _Jim_. Hands on his biceps, followed by a sudden spark of relief and joy that was almost too much to bear, a smile that tore him in two from the inside out.

 _Jim_. Hands clasping hands, and that was the worst, or the best, depending on how you looked at it. A guy could drown from a feeling like that, from a simple feeling like that.

 _Jim_. Hands pressed against glass. Jim was gasping, fading, learning what it meant to die. It wasn’t pretty; it wasn’t anything at all.

 _Jim_. Red rock and golden sand and sunlight and shadows, atmosphere that was too heavy for the uncertainty in that voice. _Your name is Jim_.

 _Jim_. The name changed, worked against him. He needed to hear it to remember who he was, who he could be. And it needed to be said so the same could be true of the man saying it.

‘Jim.’ Spoke woke him just as the sun crested in the east, behind the Stingray’s tailpipe. Jim sat up too quickly, gasping for air.

He was going out of his mind. That was all there was to it. He had a good brain and it’d been a good run, but it might as well have been scrap metal now. He couldn’t keep doing this—dropping off to dreams of another life and another man. It was as if those memories were waiting in the back of his head for his conscious mind to recede so they could surge forward and take the wheel. His brain felt like the Stingray; sure, Jim was driving, but there was someone else along for the ride, and there was no telling if or when he’d get the urge to turn the tables and send them racing down another road.

It wasn’t a great feeling. Jim rubbed at his temple, like something that simple could rearrange his brain matter, or give him something beyond what felt like a dream-hangover. Part of him was still suspended in that place between sleeping and waking.

The insides of his head stayed as they were, traitorous and protected by the wall of his skull. Jim couldn’t shift them any more than he’d been able to shift his circumstances back in Iowa.

It’d taken an explosion from the sky, a future-ship rocketing into the ground, to shake up Jim’s life. It wasn’t anything he’d done for himself. He was just working with the crap hand he’d been dealt, trying to spin it into a round that didn’t stink as bad.

Only a few seconds had passed since the last time he’d heard his name and the next breath he took.

‘Your dreams were troubling?’

It sounded like a question but it wasn’t one, not really. Jim could tell just from the way that Spock said it: he already knew. Whether he was aware of the details or not didn’t seem to matter. Jim couldn’t tell if he’d been talking in his sleep, but he’d popped up like a drowning man breaking through the surface of frozen water.

People didn’t wake up that way for no reason. Not unless they’d found less rest in sleeping than what was waiting for them in the waking world.

‘This is bullshit.’ Jim raked his fingers through his hair, trying to make sense of it. ‘You _said_ it was supposed to wear off.’

‘That is not entirely accurate.’ Spock was sitting sideways up front, his stark profile silhouetted by the rising sun. It reminded Jim of the face of a mountain he’d been climbing. In another life; as another man. Only the name was the same.

‘Whatever.’ Jim leaned forward all at once to haul himself over the driver’s seat, settling in behind the steering wheel.

He felt sick at the prospect of another day of driving. They’d hit San Francisco around late afternoon, earlier if the roads were good. He’d need a shower but he wasn’t about to get one. At least when they got to Starfleet HQ and he could drop Spock off with the authorities, he’d have one less headache to worry about.

‘You know, if you hadn’t told me you were responsible for Nero, I’d say _this_ is the worst thing you’ve ever done.’ Jim pointed to his head up top around the temple, where everything was going wrong and there was apparently nothing he could do about it. _Not entirely_.

Spock was quiet as he started up the car. The Stingray rumbled to life beneath them, jolting Jim back to reality.

Any day the engine turned over was a good day. Jim had to remind himself of that, if nothing else.

‘As you have already claimed that an apology is not in order, I will not offer one,’ Spock said. ‘However, know that it was not my intent to cause you any additional hardship.’

‘Duly noted,’ Jim said. ‘Guess you figured I had about enough of that on my plate already.’ He adjusted the rearview, then shot another glance Spock’s way. ‘Not like the golden boy.’

Spock met his eyes in the mirror. If he thought that was funny, then he kept it to himself.

Jim looked away first. Had to, since he wanted to be the one to spot the Golden Gate Bridge ahead of Spock—speaking of golden.

There’d never been a chance of that, since Vulcan eyesight was keen. Spock straightened a handful of seconds before Jim caught sight of light glancing off the cables, under the protective doming that was in place now to keep Earth safe from what’d happened to Vulcan.

Even though Spock didn’t mention it—Vulcans weren’t the point-and-stare, photo-op kinds of tourists—Jim knew there was no reason to make a fuss over something the guy’d already picked up on.

‘Same bridge as the one you’re used to?’ Jim asked instead.

‘Indeed.’ Spock sure was fond of that word, although each time, a different inflection almost hinted at a different meaning. ‘It is remarkable what remains constant.’

Jim snorted. There was nothing he could say to that; he’d studied up on some philosophies, not just the Earth ones, but all of them had left him feeling like there were more questions than answers and they weren’t the good kind of questions to ask yourself alone. Sometimes they rumbled through his head at night like a distant pickup backing out of a driveway or lumbering down the road, sweeping wide, bright headlights that did nothing more than drive off and leave Jim behind.

Jim leaned one elbow over the ledge of the Stingray’s window and settled himself more casually. If he was gonna pass by a bunch of big city snobs then the least he could do was make them jealous as hell of his wheels. He caught a few stares thrown his way at some of the bigger intersections—for the convertible, not for the Vulcan inside of it, although there were a few glances reserved for Spock.

But then, when you were a member of an endangered species, you tended to draw attention.

The bridge in the distance wasn’t the only thing reflecting glittering points of pale sunlight off a meshwork of hard steel and diamonds of glass. The sunbeams filtered hazily down through the arc of the interconnected city shields overhead and there were gathering clouds passing through the sparse, faint glimmers, muting the bright cityscape until the skyline started to look like a chunk of rock veined with fool’s gold.

Jim still remembered the time he’d thought he’d struck it rich when he was a dumbass kid and didn’t know any better.

The day’d turned misty by the time they reached Starfleet HQ, close to the shadows of its tall gates, surrounded by cadets in red and officers in gray being stopped at checkpoints for random security searches. The Building of Defense was tall and black in the center of the compound and the fog was clinging to Jim’s already feverish skin, until he was clammy at the back of his neck and under his armpits, t-shirt stuck to his chest.

‘Pretty sure this is where you get off,’ Jim said.

Spock glanced at him, the engine still purring. ‘You do not intend to come any further?’

‘You telling me you need a personal escort?’

‘I had presumed you would be, at the very least, curious—after having traveled all this way, only to turn back once you arrived at the destination.’ Spock lifted a brow. Jim tried to mirror the image with his own but it didn’t work and both his eyebrows shot up instead, which couldn’t have been effective. He frowned after that, letting them pinch together.

‘Yeah, maybe. Just not curious enough,’ he said.

‘Then you believe you would not—as the human saying goes—‘fit in’ amongst the Federation’s bravest and brightest, and wish to spare yourself the unfavorable comparison with these enterprising young cadets?’

‘Now _hang on_.’ Jim was leaning forward in his seat before he realized what he was doing. ‘I passed the entry exam for Starfleet _six years running_. Highest score at the local facility _every_ time. These guys have _nothing_ on me.’

‘Fascinating,’ Spock said.

‘Fascinating, my ass,’ Jim replied. ‘I _know_ what you’re trying to do.’

‘Any inference on your part at this juncture would not be incontestable.’

‘It’s reverse psychology,’ Jim said, ‘and it’s not gonna work.’

‘If you have passed the entry exam six years with the highest score each time, then it seems to me a grievous injury to Starfleet that you have not submitted yourself to the academy in order to avail yourself of proper training, while Starfleet availed itself of your talents.’ Spock’s fingers paused against the lock mechanism on the door before he flipped it and pushed it open. ‘They would have need of you, Jim. Of this I can be certain. To deny them—and yourself—that partnership would be most unsound logic.’

Jim tightened his grip on the steering wheel—like that’d help blow off steam, which it didn’t, and also like he wanted to rip the wheel off in frustration, which he kinda did. But the Stingray hadn’t done anything against him personally and she didn’t deserve to suffer just because Spock, and possibly all Vulcans ever, were so infuriatingly smart and smug about everything that you couldn’t keep up the volley without wanting to pull all your hair out.

‘OK, old man,’ Jim said, mashing the lock mechanism on his side while cutting the engine and leaving the Stingray in park. ‘You know what? I’ll escort you to the authorities. _Personally._ But it’s not like I’m gonna testify on your behalf.’

‘It is unlikely that testimonial will be required,’ Spock replied. ‘However, in that eventuality, I will remind myself not to rely on your character references.’

‘Are you— Was that a _joke_?’

‘Humor is not naturally a Vulcan trait.’

‘And _that_ wasn’t a no.’ Jim had to shake his legs out to keep them from cramping—then walk double-time to keep up with Spock’s pace. They didn’t make it far before they were at their first security checkpoint, Jim standing with his arms held out from his side to get patted down by a cadet twice his size, young but already balding, reminding him of every guy who’d looked at him sideways in any of the countless, shitty bars just outside of Riverside.

Jim didn’t care. He let him do his thing. Starfleet security was a bigger deal these days than it’d been in early years when everyone was still bright-eyed and talking about exploring without a thought for what they might run into out there in the darkness.

Starfleet hadn’t started out as a military force. They had combat training as a part of the program, but the ships hadn’t been built for it. Not at the beginning. Jim’d seen all the old videos proclaiming it was all about the journey. But Nero’s presence had changed everything quicker than they could catch up; mounting an offense wasn’t even an option. So Starfleet had settled for defense. They protected what they’d started with on Earth instead of their first slogan, about boldly going where no man had gone before.

Because the truth was, they’d seen what was out there where the bad outweighed the good, where the loss outweighed the gain.

And no one was looking to get a second glimpse anytime soon.

‘He’s clean.’ Jim’s burly, balding security officer leaned back, ending the pat-down right at the point when Jim was about to give up and ask the guy if he wanted to get a drink or something later since he was taking so long.

San Francisco wasn’t Iowa. He could get away with saying dumb shit when it didn’t count—because nothing and nobody did back there—but _here,_ there were bound to be people listening, taking note.

Jim had to watch what he said. At least, he had to make a good enough first impression that they’d believe him when he handed in the real criminal. Spock had this whole regal old guy thing going for him. Security had patted him down because that was protocol, but they were barelydigging deep.

Spock could’ve been hiding any number of small, handheld weapons under the folds of his robes and these asshole rookies would’ve missed ‘em. Jim made a note of their names—Hendorff and Dekker—in case it ever came up again.

He couldn’t exactly blame them for slacking, either. Ever since Starfleet had implemented the defense net around Earth’s atmosphere—something that kept Nero’s equipment from breaching their perimeter and destroying their planet just like he’d done to Vulcan—most cadets had given up hope of ever getting properly off-world. It still happened, but the odds weren’t in their favor, not after the heavy losses of years past. And, while security detail in San Francisco was an important job, it couldn’t be all that thrilling. All the real action was happening up above them in the satellite space stations built to monitor and relay the net’s condition back down to Earth. There were ships out there to guard those stations; so far, nothing hostile had slipped past them, save for a cloaked smuggling ship now and then, but those were rare. Nothing more dangerous than black market trade had come as far as San Francisco, anyway, but there were still checkpoints at every turn.

Better to have the unnecessary precautions in place than to get caught with your uniform slacks down around your ankles and wind up dead.

That should’ve been Starfleet’s new motto. They were sorely in need of an upgrade.

‘This is not the Starfleet I remember,’ Spock confided after they’d passed their third of four security checkpoints. He didn’t seem outwardly ruffled, but then, Jim wouldn’t have expected him to. Beyond a raised brow—which passed no comment and every comment simultaneously—he’d barely blinked.

‘Yeah, well, things change, Spock,’ Jim said. He gave him a sidelong look; his color was sallow, but that was normal for Vulcans. Jim couldn’t say he was in the pink of health, but he wasn’t on death’s door anymore.

Jim couldn’t tell if he cared or if that was another side-effect of the mind meld: someone else’s relief creeping in to quiet his own, real nerves. It wasn’t fair, but there was no one to complain to. There hadn’t been in a long time.

After four checkpoints, the last one in the lobby of the Building of Defense, they came out of a long hall into a wide, windowed alcove with an administration desk. The woman in uniform running it managed to look both bored and harassed at the same time. She took one glance at Spock and Jim, then pointed them to the left.

‘Vulcan refugee permits and paperwork, room five-eleven.’

‘What?’ Jim looked back at Spock, who remained unhelpfully impassive. ‘No. He’s not— He’s not looking to live here.’

‘In that case... You’re a little late for the start of term.’ The woman turned her attention to Jim, looking him up and down. ‘Anyway, Captain Pike handles all new recruits, and he already left for lunch.’

‘Don’t I wish,’ said a voice from behind them. ‘It’s been a busy day.’

Weary as that voice sounded, Jim detected a note of interest beneath the fading sigh. He thought he could picture the guy a voice like that belonged to before he turned around—and he’d almost succeeded: hair prematurely gray, face lined with experience. The only thing he hadn’t factored in was the eyepatch covering the left eye, while the right lingered keenly on Jim instead of on Spock, almost like there was something he recognized that was more important there than the sudden appearance of the galaxy’s oldest Vulcan.

Jim cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck where he was sweating—not again, but still—pretending it was all part of a stretch and yawn that meant he wasn’t paying equally keen attention right back.

‘Captain Pike,’ Spock said, taking care of business like he might’ve been a diplomat or an ambassador in another life. Or, more likely, in another universe. ‘It is indeed a welcome relief to see you here.’

‘You’ve got me at a disadvantage,’ Captain Pike replied. ‘You’re glad to see me, but I’ve got no idea who you are—and whether I should be glad or...something else.’

‘I am Spock.’ Spock held up one hand. Jim squinted sideways at the shape his fingers took, a V with an extended thumb that Jim’s own fingers twitched to imitate, at least until he tightened them against his scalp and the urge passed.

‘Huh.’ The wrinkles around the cup of black fabric covering Pike’s left eye deepened. It wasn’t part of a smile. ‘I wasn’t aware that was a common Vulcan name.’

‘That,’ Spock replied, ‘is because it is not.’

‘Funny—since we’ve already got one Spock working here for us. Maybe you’ve heard of him. Intelligent guy. Real asset to the Federation. You wouldn’t be trying to impersonate somebody about—no offense to my elders, of course—upwards of ninety years your junior in order to gain access somewhere you don’t belong, now would you?’

‘Such an attempt would at best be futile and at worst, foolish,’ Spock said. ‘Vulcans are not the latter and they do not engage in efforts to the former.’

‘Spoken like a true Vulcan, that’s for sure.’ Pike shifted a PADD from one hand to the other and gestured with it, already turning on one booted heel. ‘All right. If you’re asking for a private meeting, what the hell. It’s not like I was looking forward much to lunch, anyway. Never _could_ explain to a Vulcan the human affection for a good sandwich. This way, gentlemen.’

Captain Pike started down the hall at a clip. Spock, Jim noted, moved smoothly, instinctively after him. That left Jim scrambling again to bring up the rear, never quite matching the same pace—or its confidence.

He was also the only guy around who wasn’t in some kind of a uniform, since he figured what Spock was wearing had to be formal. Everybody’d treated him with respect, which was a laugh; nobody knew who it was they were welcoming. A little gray hair and a solemn expression, not to mention a pair of rare, pointed ears, and suddenly everybody was acting like you were something special.

 _Something special_. They were right about that—quantitatively, if not qualitatively.

They passed through a hallway walled in glass, lined with strip lighting; Jim bet it would’ve been blinding if the sun hadn’t been fogged over. Now, the cloud cover, gloomy as it was, might’ve been a backhanded blessing. They could see the Academy green from where they were and, beyond that, the water and the bridge. It was one hell of a view. Jim turned away from it to the folds in Spock’s robes where they were draped over his back, the shadows tucked into each, one small, green bloodstain splattered by a seam reminding him of everything they were here about. How it sure as hell wasn’t pretty.

Captain Pike’s office was part of a greater system of interconnected offices and what Jim figured were research stations; he had to wave off a few interested, insistent parties who were waiting for him to get past the door, a couple of them cadets in red.

‘My associate will wait for us outside,’ Spock said as Jim stepped forward. ‘...For the time being.’

 _Associate_ , Jim mouthed, the door clicking shut between them. Your _associate_. Perfect. He rolled his eyes and stuffed his hands into his pockets and dared anyone around to look at him twice, which—for the most part—they didn’t even bother with.

Being ignored was probably worse than drawing the wrong kind of attention, the kind you got in full for sticking out like a sore thumb. Jim crossed one leg over the other at the ankle and caught whatever gaze happened to linger on him, holding it until it wavered. When he ran out of curious expressions to challenge, he turned his attentions to scanning the general office, the computer screens, all the busy-work, the incoming transmissions, a whirlwind of constant action and crisp, clean uniforms, while the people wearing them fit into each other’s routines like the parts of an engine that hadn’t rolled up to the auto-shop busted for a change.

From inside, Starfleet functioned smoothly. It was once they left their protective dome that they ran into trouble.

Jim noticed, among the group, that there was only one Vulcan—and not just because he’d been spending too much of his spare time with Vulcans lately. A door across the floor opened, a younger Vulcan in black appearing from within private chambers, his hands clasped behind his back, to confer with a blonde in red over what had to be some figures.

But, Jim also noticed, he wasn’t the only one paying close attention to the guy.

There was something off about a man passing by one of the monitoring stations. For one thing, his hat was pulled down over his ears. For another, he’d been staring at that door before it’d opened, like he’d known who was in there—and like he was waiting for that someone to come out.

Jim sat up a little straighter, then stood, keeping his eyes lowered as he pretended to stretch his legs out. Right first, left second. He put on a good show of being so concerned about the cramp in his calf that no one gave him a second look, probably less than a second thought. That was one of the few perks that came with being one of the only guys around not in uniform—the only way Jim stuck out was in that everyone had already discounted him as unimportant, figuring he didn’t belong there to begin with.

Fine by him. Not belonging had given him a sharp eye for anyone else like him, anyone elsewho fell just outside the perimeter of normal. And the guy in the hat with the brim pulled down so no one could see his face—he was sticking out in a big way.

No one tucked their ears into a hat like that. It wasn’t comfortable. And it was far from logical, which meant that whoever was under there, they weren’t hiding a pointed pair of _Vulcan_ ears.

Jim raised his head quick, taking in the scene. The man in the hat was headed straight for the blonde and the Vulcan; it wasn’t a collision course, but his pace was determined and swift. Not fast enough to draw attention, but not so slow that anyone was gonna think he was hesitating because he didn’t belong as a piece of the bureaucratic machinery.

Jim started to drift toward them, an unmarked vessel, the dumb hick from Iowa flying across the Neutral Zone and into enemy territory.

A faint rumbling from below stopped him in his tracks, the floor vibrating under his boots. The ground seemed to sway, but the Vulcan in black didn’t lose his balance and it didn’t stop the man in the hat headed toward him, either.

‘Earthquake,’ one of the security cadets said, warning bells starting to sound.

But there was a plume of pale smoke rising from one of the Starfleet science buildings across the green and Jim could easily see over a dozen red uniforms pouring out the doors, flooding into the fields to evacuate the area.

Not an earthquake, then, but an explosion.

Something bright and silver flickered in the corner of Jim’s vision, catching a glassy reflection of pale sunlight, and he snapped back to the hall, to reality as it was happening in front of him, instead of to some other people a quarter-mile off who could probably take care of themselves better than he could.

‘Phaser! Get down!’

He saw the weapon in the guy’s hand, realized what it was before he knew he was the one shouting about it. And it didn’t take a trained cadet to mark where it was aiming.

Jim was already off and running like the ground had tipped out from under him after all, with Jim stumbling forward across the remaining distance on legs that weren’t obeying him. He slammed into the man in the hat, clipping him hard in the shoulder from behind. Jim let his forward momentum carry him into the Vulcan after that, dragging him down and wrenching him out of the line of fire, putting himself in its way instead, before their balance tipped.

It seemed like a good idea to the parts of him that were capable of having ideas just then, all electric impulse and muscle response, action and reaction and no forethought synapses firing between.

What it meant in real-time was that Jim landed hard on the floor with one-fifty-odd pounds of Vulcan directly on top of him.

The impact winded him, leaving him just enough space to watch, dizzily, as the blond kneed their attacker in the gut and disarmed him. Then, the Vulcan on Jim’s stomach elbowed him in the ribs, like he thought maybe Jim was in on the attack.

The phaser went skidding across the floor.

‘Easy— _easy_!’ Pain sparked through Jim’s chest. It was a struggle to get the words out clearly. ‘Jesus, I’m on _your_ side!’

The Vulcan stiffened. They were almost back to front, with his right shoulder under Jim’s chin and the small of his back pressed to Jim’s stomach where his t-shirt was riding up again. He was trying to brace himself without leaning into Jim; that was where the elbow had come in.

Slowly, he turned, _almost_ like he was curious enough to get a look at Jim. He could only manage it in profile, the angular lines of his face backlit by the gray daylight, muted not just by fog but also the rising smoke of the explosion outside.

 _Déjà vu_ , Jim thought. Only this was no Iowa sunrise, and _this_ Vulcan had about three hundred—strike that, three _thousand_ years to go before he hit Spock status.

‘You are on your own side,’ the Vulcan said, referring to Jim’s literal position. ‘Although the metaphorical implications made by your statement of loyalty have yet to be verified.’

By now, security had pulled themselves together with their own phasers out, set to stun no doubt, and all of ‘em trained on the uniformed attacker. His hat had been knocked off in the struggle, revealing a bald, tattooed head and a pair of fleshy, pointed ears.

Even without the telltale ink, Jim would never have mistaken him for a Vulcan. It was just tough to picture this guy lifting one eyebrow with such perfect precision.

Romulan. And the tattoos said he was one of Nero’s crew, to boot.

A shadow fell across Jim’s vision just as it started to waver. People always said you saw red when you were angry, when your adrenaline spiked with rage, but the truth was, Jim was seeing black sparked with white. Maybe it was the effect of the ache in his ribcage, the bruise on his hip starting to blossom, the fingers accidentally brushing over his on the floor.

Maybe it was a combination of just about everything.

Jim blinked to see that it was Spock standing over him, the old guy himself, and Captain Pike at his side. Spock’s eyebrow had gone up but it wasn’t in surprise. It was almost in recognition, if not in outright approval.

‘Janice Rand, isn’t it?’ Captain Pike said, stepping immediately into action. ‘That was excellent work. Quick thinking. You don’t need a med check, do you?’

‘It stands to reason that I would find you in this position, Jim,’ Spock said, pulling Jim’s focus. His gaze lingered on Jim for a few moments too long for comfort and, for those moments, Jim forgot about his anger and his pain in place of disbelief, a little annoyance, curiosity and a healthy dose of confusion. Then, Spock switched his attention to the Vulcan Jim’d just rescued, for no reason at all other than it seemed like a swell idea at the time, and definitely not because he’d been expecting any praise or warm thank-yous. Because that would’ve been too illogical even for him. ‘Ah... And you must be Spock.’

Spock.

Two Spocks.

‘Aren’t you gonna—’ Jim had to break off to catch his breath—to wheeze, if he was being honest—yanking his hand away from the Vulcan’s with a crack of his elbow against the polished floor to wipe the sweat off his upper lip, then pull at the rip in the shoulder of his t-shirt. He had no idea how it’d happened, but there it was, cotton damp with more sweat. ‘Isn’t this gonna cause two universes to, I don’t know, fold in on each other or something?’

‘I see no reason why it should,’ Spock replied.

Other Spock—Little Spock?—Dark, Angry, Sexy Spock—Jim didn’t know what the hell to call him yet, not that it was any of his business—stood at once and crisply, efficient enough that it became graceful; if he’d suffered the same impact when they fell or had deflected most of it by using Jim’s body to cushion the blow, there was no way of telling. He tugged at the hem of the black wool jacket he was wearing, pale fingers on dark fabric, smoothing out invisible wrinkles like Romulans tried to kill him every day and it was important to look good while it happened.

‘I do not believe we have met,’ Other-Spock said. He did the hand thing, a salute that made Jim’s fingers twitch. ‘An uncommon occurrence, as I make a point to be aware of all of Vulcan’s survivors.’

Spock returned the greeting. ‘Indeed. That is because I am not one of Vulcan’s survivors.’

Jim couldn’t take it anymore. He heaved himself up on one arm to watch Pike instead, dealing with the Romulan, who was cuffed with his head bowed, on his knees with seven phasers trained on him. Twice that number wouldn’t have been too many, Jim thought. Twice that many wouldn’t even have been enough.

But because he was down on the ground, Jim was at just the right angle to see the bastard swallow—gulp—the muscles in his jaw tensing like he was biting down on something.  

‘No—’ Jim was speaking without thinking again, moving without realizing it, reaching out even though he knew he was too late. ‘No, no no no, you’re not gonna be able to question him—’

He didn’t get the chance to finish the warning. The Romulan dropped like roadkill, shoulders crumpling; he convulsed on the floor in arrhythmic, ugly spasms, froth bubbling white at the mouth, until the twitching stopped.

It was over in a handful of seconds, maybe less. There was no chance of calling up a medical officer in time to inject a stimulant and keep him alive for questioning. It was a classic failsafe. Whatever his plan had been, whatever the plans he was a part of might still be, there’d be no questioning him now, no way for him to give anything away.

Jim slammed his hand against the floor in frustration, wincing when he caught the bone in his wrist.

The pain grounded him.

Because there’d been more to it than just one attempted murder. The smoke outside; the explosion in the science building. The Vulcan Jim’d saved—now he remembered reading all about him, name redacted. The genius who’d designed the space shields, who was partially responsible for the best means they had of keeping Earth safe.

What was the bigger picture, then? Jim’s mind was racing, but that was only because he already knew the answer. Take out the technology and take out the guy who could rebuild the technology—and Earth was an easier target than it had been in years.

Jim pushed himself to his feet. ‘Science building,’ he said, grabbing Captain Pike’s arm. Still not thinking. He didn’t have time for that; none of them did. ‘Explosion. Where’re the shield specs—the _generator_ —?’

For less than a second, Pike’s lone eye drilled a hole that felt like it was delivering a bucket-load of red matter straight into Jim’s skull. He braced himself for being called an idiot, crazy, out of his mind, interfering with _real_ business, and worse—but instead Pike stiffened and started for a console pad, punching it hard to open up communications.

He was pretty spry for a guy his age who only had one working eye and his fair share of limps and scars.

‘Status report; this is Captain Pike. There was an explosion out there. I need to know everything, fast. What the hell happened?’

Static came through, followed by a choppy answer. ‘—know yet, sir—assessing the damage—Science and Research lab, East Wing—’

‘Research library,’ Pike explained. ‘Somebody’s trying to take out the goddamn servers—kill our records.’

That meant there was only one target that could’ve been left.

‘The generators,’ Jim said, although he got the feeling he didn’t need to spell it out. Pike grabbed a phaser out of a cadet’s hands and threw it to Jim before he got one of his own.

‘Security detail, with me. You too, Kirk.’ His voice was steady, solid as rock, with as much promise as a well-oiled engine.

‘Romulans have strength superior to humans.’ Other-Spock’s voice didn’t have that depth Jim had come to expect but it sure could send a shudder straight to the base of a guy’s spine all the same. ‘As such, it is important that you are accompanied by security that is similarly endowed.’

‘Can’t risk something happening to you, Spock,’ Pike replied, ‘and we _don’t_ have time to argue.’

‘Captain Pike,’ Other-Spock said, ‘you must yield to the logic of the situation.’

‘God _damn_ logic.’ Pike’s voice snarled on the final word; Jim was actually starting to like him. The phaser was heavy and cool in his hands; it hadn’t been fired. Yet. ‘And God damn desperate measures, while we’re at it. Let’s move.’

They made up a haphazard emergency response team, all things considered: Jim; three guys in red from the security detail; old one-eye, Captain Pike; and Other-Spock, who hadn’t accepted a phaser. He also hadn’t tossed Jim a second glance after he’d pulled him out of harm’s way—so Jim wasn’t holding his breath for a _thank you_ anytime soon.

That was fine. He’d known from the start he hadn’t done it for the gratitude.

Like—well, no. _Like father, like son_ wasn’t the expression Jim wanted. Because if he understood things correctly—and Spock had implied he did—then the two Vulcans were something closer than blood relatives.

The old man had stayed behind. Jim only realized it after they’d left, Captain Pike taking point with one of the security officers, then Other-Spock, then Jim. The remaining two reds brought up the rear and Jim didn’t have any questions about how they’d fallen into that arrangement. Someone wanted to keep an eye on him.

To a Starfleet officer, Jim was nothing more dependable than a rogue element in the middle of an already bad day.

He’d have been watching himself too.

The generators for Starfleet’s atmospheric defense matrix were in an engineering wing adjacent to the Building of Defense. The hangar had been built specially so they could keep the tech under a close eye and heavy guard at all times; there were security cameras surrounding the main generator, not to mention phaser cannons mounted on automated turrets. Jim saw Pike gesturing angrily up ahead, shoving one of the guards aside to input the access code into the control panel. The thick door slid open with a hiss, Pike getting in and ducking under before it’d retracted all the way to the top.

Jim glanced past the window toward the hangar’s outdoor entrance. It was similarly guarded, with a high ironwork fence stretched all the way around.

There was no sign of foul play.

Maybe he’d been wrong. The creeping doubt swelled to hit him full-force, strangling his momentum as he stumbled after Other-Spock into the darkened thrum of the generator room. There weren’t many lights on since this wasn’t exactly a scheduled maintenance run. All they had to go by was the glow from the generators themselves and a few bare strips of essential illumination overhead.

Pike came to a full halt where the room bottlenecked before spilling out into rows of the enormous engines and turbines. The floor hummed under Jim’s feet.

This was it, the place that powered Earth’s last, best shot at surviving despite the threat that was always waiting for them to lower their defenses, or even just to shut their eyes.

‘We’re not looking for a big crew.’ Pike held up a hand when the others drew even with him, keeping his voice lowered. Jim stole a brief glance at Spock, who was staring into the black, shadowy spaces between the glow of machinery with a look on his face that suggested, if he spotted a Romulan, he was going to rethink that phaser he’d declined. Intense. Angrier than Jim’d expected, at least for a Vulcan. ‘This is a small operation—precision, stealth. If we’ve got one thing on Nero, it’s numbers. Spread out and locate the threat. You know it’s not my favorite order to give by a long shot, but if you think you’ve got a shot—take it.’

‘You would deprive us of our advantage,’ Other Spock said. ‘Our odds of locating the Romulan operative would naturally improve the more ground we are able to cover; however, the odds of subduing said operative when confronted by a lone human are astronomically poor.’

‘Jesus,’ Jim muttered under his breath.

Only Pike seemed to hear him—and his expression said Starfleet was paying a lot for opinions as helpful as that one.

‘Pair up,’ Pike said. ‘Adams, you’re with me.’

Jim grabbed Other-Spock’s elbow, before he remembered that he shouldn’t, that casual touch was a Vulcan faux-pas in a big way, even if the contact wasn’t skin-on-skin. He could feel the bone that joined Spock’s forearm to his bicep, three separate lumps under the soft weave of his black tunic.

Other-Spock didn’t shake him off. Instead, he gave Jim a look like he was a stray dog who’d leapt up and latched onto him with a big, slobbery mouth.

‘Well, I’m not getting stuck with _those_ guys,’ Jim said. He gestured to the remaining two security cadets, both of whom looked like they shared his sentiment and didn’t want to be stuck with themselves, either. ‘Come on. Quick.’

‘I am aware of the need for speed in this operative,’ Other-Spock said.

He jerked his eyebrows in the direction Pike and Adams hadn’t gone, then pulled his elbow free of Jim’s grasp.

Jim followed.

Over the whir of fans cooling heavy machinery and complicated databanks, Jim could hear nothing more intrusive than his heartbeat, his quickened breathing. Spock moved with a lean kind of grace that suggested he was used to this type of situation—but Jim knew a thing or two about sneaking around, himself. It wasn’t so tough to keep up, since enough nights staying out past curfew and doing his best to keep Frank in the dark about where he was had prepared him for the kind of caution this ‘operative’ needed.

Frank on a bad day wasn’t as tough as a Romulan, not by a mile. But the principle was the same and Jim had a phaser in his sweaty hands this time, which was better than he usually got in terms of defense. Hell, it wasn’t even defense but _offense_.

What he wouldn’t have given, once upon a time, for his very own phaser set to stun.

Spock wove between driver frames and coolant units while Jim kept an eye over their shoulders. Every fresh turn was like a punch to Jim’s pulse, holding the promise of unknown danger, but when they ran into Pike and his partner at last, doubling back around, all ground covered, it was clear that nobody’d been there.

Jim wasn’t disappointed. Objectively, not running into a Romulan assassin was a good thing no matter what you were looking for. But the damn fool tactic had been his bright idea in the first place—and now it was obvious it’d been nothing more than a waste of energy and time.

‘Good.’ Captain Pike nodded crisply; the lack of sarcasm in his voice took Jim by surprise. ‘If somebody _was_ gunning for the generators, then it looks like we might’ve beaten ‘em to it. Foiled whatever the hell their plan was. Getting here first is the _only_ turn of good luck we’ve had today. Smart thinking, Kirk.’

Jim swallowed. His throat felt like there was dust in it. It could’ve been a product of the thin, cool air in the generator room, but Jim knew that was a flimsy excuse. He didn’t know why he felt like he was choking, only that he did.

He swallowed again, forcing whatever was swelling up out of his lungs back down into his chest.

‘Uh,’ Jim said. ‘Sure. ...Sir. But we didn’t find anyone.’

‘Which means, for now, the generators _might_ just be safe. _And_ we’ve got an idea of where to allocate extra security, too. All in all, I’d say no news is good news as far as Romulans are concerned. Spock, you have those extra security protocol overrides memorized?’

Spock—Other-Spock, Jim had to remind himself, although technically the old guy Jim met first was the real Other-Spock here—inclined his head and lifted an eyebrow in what had to be the biggest Vulcan _you’ve got to be shitting me_ anyone had ever seen. Jim forgot what he’d been choking on to outright stare, just to be sure he was seeing what he thought he’d seen. ‘Indeed, Captain Pike. Naturally.’

‘ _Naturally_.’ Even in the darkness, Jim could tell Pike was rolling his eyes. It must’ve been the adrenaline still pumping through Jim’s veins, but he couldn’t fight back a grin at the exchange. ‘Well, why don’t we get on that, then? Seems like now’s the best time for implementing a little extra security, if there ever was one.’

Jim’s first inclination was to continue listening—because Pike had an even, steady voice that commanded respect and suggested that, no matter how many Romulans there were, Starfleet had the element of determination on their side, and that was enough to tip the balance of power in Earth’s favor.

Except Jim’d heard a sound beyond the conversation, faint but recognizable. It reminded him of a speedometer clicking over from one setting to the next. It was a faint tick, but Jim’d noticed it all the same, looking up at the exact instant Spock did.

So Jim wasn’t hearing things. They were on the same page.

Spock started forward first but Jim wasn’t more than a step behind him. It was all right to let Spock take the lead on this one because he knew the area better than Jim—something told Jim he had the blueprints memorized and could pull them up like a file on a computer without so much as needing a terminal—but a bleep and click out of the ordinary in a place like this could only mean a few things. All of them pointed to some kind of malfunction.

Given the way things were going, it probably wasn’t an accident.

Jim was down on both knees before Spock dropped to one, already sliding himself underneath a databank frame a few shades brighter than the others. That hollow noise was echoing from below and Jim slipped in smoothly, just like he was rolling under the body of an antique back at the autoshop.

‘ _Jesus_ ,’ Jim said.

‘A detonation device,’ Spock said, confirming the obvious without having to look for himself.

It was. Jim noted six distinctly colored wires and a countdown screen with only a few minutes left on it—the works. Jim almost snorted in disbelief, the kind of laughter you gave into because you didn’t know how else to express the sudden flood of conflicting emotions.

And it was better than screaming or sobbing. Definitely cooler than those alternatives.

‘Four minutes, twenty-eight seconds,’ Jim said.

‘I can disarm it,’ Spock began, but Jim nudged in his direction with his knee to cut him off and made blind contact.

‘All due respect, Spock, but aren’t you the guy in charge of coming up with the stuff that keeps this planet safe?’ Jim swiped his tongue over his bottom lip. ‘Besides, I’ve got some experience with mechanics. If anybody disarms this thing, it should be somebody a little more expendable than a genius Vulcan scientist.’

‘Flattery will not prove fruitful with a Vulcan,’ Spock said.

Jim snorted again, another wild laugh he couldn’t control. ‘Get outta here. Take Pike with you. I’ve got this.’

‘We have no credentials for you on file, nor do we have any reason to trust you,’ Spock pointed out.

Sweat dripped from Jim’s temple down the side of his jaw. ‘How about that time I _saved your life_?’

‘You’d better know what you’re doing, Kirk.’ That was Pike; he sounded pissed but not in the way that suggested Jim’d be paying for his bullshit later. ‘Get out of here, Spock. Kirk’s right.’

It wasn’t difficult, Jim told himself. It was rudimentary, the kind of shoddy, quick work that Jim’d studied ten years ago on a whim. He could’ve put a device like this one together, just not with quite the same firepower as the bomb overhead. But that meant he knew which wire to pull even before Pike’s footsteps receded, along with Spock’s, the former steady, the latter clipped. Probably pissed.

Not very Vulcan of him.

Jim waited until he heard the main doors sliding shut. Then, he grabbed the yellow wire and pulled.

He didn’t realize how fast his heart’d been pounding until the countdown froze in place. Jim’s fingers were cramping and he forced himself to even out his breathing before he unhooked the explosive from where it’d been jammed into place, careful not to jostle anything along the way.

Spock and Pike were waiting for him outside, Pike giving commands into a communicator, Spock staring at the door like he was trying to burn it down.

‘Bomb squad’s on its way,’ Pike said, looking up at once. ‘Should be here in thirty seconds or I’m demoting the lot of them. You sure that thing’s stable?’

‘Define sure,’ Jim replied, grin wobbly before it steadied itself.

‘To be free from doubt as to the reliability of something, most often one’s actions or character.’ Spock looked at him like he’d changed his mind and it was Jim he wanted to burn to a crisp. ‘It is not a description one could freely append to you.’

‘Just for _example_ ,’ Jim said. He was feeling good, because the rush of adrenaline that’d surged through him when he pulled the right wire hadn’t dissipated yet. When it did, he’d know. He was pretty sure—speaking of defining the word—that his knees were about to buckle. ‘Figure of speech, Spocko.’

‘The name is Spock.’

Like Jim didn’t know that.

‘Figures of speech and bomb defusing don’t _exactly_ mix, Kirk,’ Pike said.

Somehow, despite the obvious admonishment, he still managed to sound like he was on Jim’s side. It was that lone eye, something about the weight of his gaze. It felt almost like they were laughing together, at a private joke Jim was sure he hadn’t told.

Or the guy was just grateful Jim hadn’t managed to get them all blown up.

‘Aye aye, sir.’ Jim affected a salute, only because he knew it’d drive Spock crazy. ‘I hear you loud and clear.’

Obviously, no one had ever done this Spock the favor of telling him that humans got a special pride and joy out of getting under each other’s skin. If they could get under a Vulcan’s skin, then hell—it was only logical they’d think of it as a bigger, better accomplishment.

‘I must question the efficacy of your hearing, as you claim to understand Captain Pike’s statements while simultaneously failing to answer his very simple question.’ Spock’s hands were locked behind his back, but he tilted his head, leaning toward Jim like a hungry owl who’d just spotted a fat vole in the field below.

‘Hasn’t it been thirty seconds yet?’ Jim’s gaze slid back to Pike.

Even as the joke fell flat, he could hear the bomb squad rushing in, a half-dozen pairs of boots on the floor beating in the same quickened rhythm as Jim’s heartbeat. Jim put his back to the wall as they raced past, uniformed in Starfleet grays and toting a ton of intricate equipment. He tried not to think about what one of them would say if they knew he’d just yanked one of the wires out based on intel he’d hacked out of a private Federation databank when he wasn’t even fifteen years old.

What could he say? The Romulans weren’t all that sophisticated with their tech. Which was weird, considering they’d come from the future and all.

He was gonna have to ask Spock about that. Old Spock. When he got the chance.

He was gonna need some better terms for differentiation. But for now, that only mattered inside his own head.

Point was, there were too many things he wasn’t sure about. How he was feeling was the least of his worries.

‘Well.’ Jim shoved his hands in his pockets, ducking his head in a feigned nod. ‘Now that the experts are here to save the day, I guess I’ll be showing myself out.’

‘As you might imagine, the explosives and detonation unit will seek to question the civilian who disarmed the charge,’ Spock said.

He didn’t step in front of Jim or try to stop him, though, which was his first mistake.

‘I thought Vulcans didn’t put much stock in imagination.’ Jim winked, tossing a shrug toward Captain Pike, who deserved better than Jim was giving him. ‘I gotta go hook up with the old man. God only knows what he’ll get into without me.’

‘We were having a pretty interesting discussion in my office before we were interrupted,’ Pike agreed. He didn’t try to stop Jim, either. He didn’t have to. ‘Imagination doesn’t factor into it—I _will_ seek to question the civilian who disarmed the charge. But I’ve got one hell of a mess to clean up before that. I’m expecting to see you waiting for me in my office, Kirk. And don’t look at me like I’m ruining your sight-seeing plans. We’ve got the campus on lockdown until this mess gets straightened out. _No one’s_ going _anywhere_.’

There it was. The fine print. Even with one eye, Pike didn’t miss much.

‘Who’d wanna leave?’ Jim replied. ‘All the action’s right here anyway.’

He wished he’d saved the salute for later, something to keep in his back pocket so he could whip it out now. He tugged at the fall of his shirt where it was loose now, thin cotton torn along the seam. He hadn’t brought a spare because he wasn’t expecting to rip his favorite t-shirt saving Starfleet’s favorite, bad-tempered, Vulcan genius.

Jim couldn’t waitto ask Spock what that was all about.

But first, he had to find him.

*


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What do I do with this enormous crush on Captain Pike?

By the time Jim’d found Old Spock to rendezvous with him—his feet retracing the steps he’d taken from the main offices to the generator center, without the energy left to scrutinize this unexpected, natural instinct—his knees had finally caught up with his gut. They felt like two blown out tires after a drag race while the rest of Jim felt like the empty shell of a car abandoned at the side of the road, stripped of its more expensive parts, starting to rust under the hull.

He wasn’t too surprised to discover Old Spock was exactly where Jim’d left him, standing in front of Pike’s office as serene and calm as if nothing had happened—as if nothing was still happening all around him and the bustle of secretaries and security officers and other higher-ups going into panic mode was as easy to wave off as a mosquito in June.

Jim sat next to him on one of the waiting benches next to the door that said CAPTAIN PIKE on the glass. He wiped his palms on his thighs, denim just rough enough to settle him with welcome friction, and leaned his head back until it hit the wall. He didn’t blink until his eyes burned and he had to close them.

After that, he couldn’t find the energy to open them again.

‘You didn’t bring me here ‘cause you figured all of this would happen or something like that, did you?’ Jim asked. The back of his throat felt scratchy but he couldn’t show the obvious weakness of clearing it.

‘Vulcans cannot predict the future. Jim.’

‘Not even when they’re _from_ the future, Spock?’

‘As my presence in this timeline appears to have drastically altered its destiny,’ Spock replied, ‘I believe the saying goes... Your guess as to what will happen next is as good as mine.’

Jim snorted. ‘Guessing, imagining... You’re one hell of a weird Vulcan.’

Spock’s voice deepened. ‘So I have been told.’

‘Anyway...’ Jim had to keep talking in order to crowd out the buzzing of his thoughts, turning to static between his ears, the skin on his cheeks and jaw prickling with heat. ‘You know how to show a guy a good time, that’s for sure.’

‘Is this your definition of a good time?’

‘Use your imagination,’ Jim suggested. ‘It beats the county fair in Riverside any day.’

‘Nevertheless, your actions today have been commendable. You suggested that I foresaw these eventualities—that is not strictly true. But neither am I surprised that, when danger presented itself, you acted as befitted your nature. Without thought to your own well-being, you prevented the injury of multiple strangers.’

‘Defused a bomb, too,’ Jim said. ‘Just saying. Is that other Spock—’

‘As strange as it may seem to you, Jim, I can assure you, I too am aware of the distinct peculiarity of this situation.’

‘ _Distinct peculiarity_.’ Jim stretched the muscles in his jaw and lips, trying to get feeling back into his skin. Everything was numb. Heroics were catching up to him and they didn’t feel good. ‘That’s... That’s the most messed up way of putting it _ever_ , old man.’

‘If you are possessed of any preferable alternatives,’ Spock said.

Jim wasn’t. And, he suspected, Old Spock’d known it.

‘Distinct peculiarity,’ Jim repeated instead. ‘This is _crazy_ , you know that?’

‘Tell me, Jim,’ Spock replied, ‘how do you feel?’

Jim had no answer for that; he had to tell himself that Spock wouldn’t have asked if he’d known the answer. It wasn’t the Vulcan way. And despite all the _distinct peculiarities_ going around, some Vulcan principles weren’t made to be broken.

Jim swallowed. He was still choking on the action, the reaction, the way Pike’d said his name, _Kirk_ , and the way Old Spock kept saying his name, _Jim_ , two halves of a whole that didn’t exist until the moment he’d collided with Starfleet. Literally, if he counted his collision with Spock. Their hands touching, their bodies shoved together, how warm it’d been despite how cold Spock’d been to him after that.

‘I feel like you’re a pain in my ass,’ Jim said finally.

The truth was, he felt as crazy as everything else around him. It wasn’t all bad, either.

Jim opened his eye to ask another question—not sure what it was going to be, which wasn’t unusual, until it left his mouth. But there wasn’t a chance to find out because Captain Pike was approaching, flanked by a security detail he was in the midst of waving off.

‘You two,’ Pike said, pointing at Old Spock first, Jim second. ‘In my office. Now.’

‘It has been many years since the last time I was spoken to like a wayward cadet,’ Spock admitted.

‘Face it,’ Jim replied, pushing himself to his feet, ‘you’ve _never_ been spoken to like a wayward cadet.’

Spock lifted an eyebrow. Then, serenely, he stepped into Pike’s office. Jim followed, fighting the urge to lean back against the door as it slid shut behind them.

Pike crossed around his desk, set down a PADD, and braced his hands on his knuckles on either side of it. Then, he rested his full weight forward. He was quiet. He was pissed. Jim didn’t blame him. Somebody’d come onto his campus and messed with the things he protected.

Jim looked away. 

‘This,’ Pike said, ‘has been one hell of a day. So you’ll have to forgive me when I say it _all_ leads back to where it started: with the two of _you_ showing up. Am I right, gentlemen?’

‘Though I am a Vulcan, as you know,’ Spock replied, ‘and Vulcans do not often accept the principles of coincidence, the events of this morning were as much anathema to you as they were to me, captain. I did not anticipate them. I could not have done so.’

‘A little bit _too_ lucky, though, isn’t it?’ Pike fixed Jim with his lone eye, which somehow offered twice the amount of focus as most people mustered with two. ‘You _just so happen_ to arrive minutes before a Romulan assassin tries to take out our _best_ defense scientist, another assassin _blows up_ a laboratory, _and_ you miraculously know how to defuse a bomb that would’ve wiped out our shields for who-knows how long, leaving us completely defenseless against arguably our greatest enemy. Now, sure, we deal with all kinds of luck in Starfleet. Always have. But it’s never exactly been the _good_ kind.’

Jim was aware of every bead of sweat on his skin, every tear in the cotton of his t-shirt, how dirty his jeans had been when he first got into the Stingray and how long it’d been since his last shower.

‘No—don’t answer that,’ Pike continued. ‘Yes, your story was crazy, Ambassador Spock, but that doesn’t mean I think you or any Vulcan would break that pain-in-the-ass no-lie precept on _my_ account. I might not believe I’m saying this, myself, but considering what you know and how you know it—I believe you. Damn it, I do.’ Pike shook his head. At some point, Jim’d started watching him again, and now, he couldn’t take his eyes off him. ‘So _because_ I believe you, I guess you could say that means I _trust_ you, too. Enough to tell you this isn’t good. There’s _something_ in the works. The Romulans are making their move against us and, call it a hunch, but I’ve got a feeling this was only the beginning—hell, more like a continuation of the nightmare we’ve been living for almost twenty god-damn years. And the Federation has its hands tied behind its back. Klingons breathing down our necks, Neutral Zones to patrol, whatever semblance of peace we’ve got to keep... It’s not as though Starfleet can look into this without us wasting all our time on red tape and _signatures_ before we can act. And by then... Who knows. It might just be too late for all of us.’

‘I believe I can infer your meaning,’ Spock said.

‘Whoa, whoa.’ Jim stepped forward. ‘What’re we inferring, exactly?’

‘Starfleet cannot condone the use of its forces to pursue the Romulan threat in a timely manner.’ Spock looked at Jim; there was a fond nostalgia on his face that couldn’t have anything to do with the current conversation. The old man was somewhere else—or he wished he was. Thinking of better days. ‘There were times when my captain would find himself equally hindered by the very rules and regulations he had sworn to uphold.’

‘Gee, that must’ve been rough.’ Jim’s voice was colored with a heat he didn’t understand, contempt for someone he’d never met. Maybe he was just trying to see if he could get a rise out of Spock just as easily as he could from Spock’s younger counterpart.

But the old guy didn’t even snap at the bait. Jim should’ve known. He’d gotten all excited by the presence of another, younger Spock, one he could still successfully pay back for getting under his skin—for getting literally into his mind.

He’d almost forgotten that the one who’d caused the offense in the first place was just as distant, just as unreachable as always.

It wasn’t fair, but neither was life. And Jim had been given a specific outlook on _just_ how unfair it was. After all, he’d seen the other half of the coin.

He still hadn’t worked out how to thank Spock for that—although torturing Junior was working out well enough for the time being.

‘At times, yes, it certainly provided difficulties,’ Spock said. Like Jim had been expressing a sincere statement and not just yanking his chain. ‘But you are in a unique position—offering unique freedoms, which the captain I once knew did not possess.’

‘Yeah?’ Jim felt his eyebrows shoot up. He rubbed the back of his neck where it was sweaty. ‘Freedom to not be captain of a starship, I guess. Freedom’s _great._ ’

‘You’re an independent,’ Pike said. ‘You can go places we can’t and follow leads we _definitely_ can’t, not without pending approval from the higher-ups.’

‘ _Pending_ ,’ Jim said, popping the ‘p.’ ‘Everybody’s favorite word.’

He wasn’t stupid. He was starting to get an idea of what they were asking, implying, _inferring,_ but he was gonna make them ask it outright instead of talking around the subject before he commented one way or another.

‘Kirk.’ Pike was getting tired of his games. He didn’t have Spock’s infinite patience and, like he’d said, they were having one hell of a bad day on all fronts. ‘I’ll be blunt: we could use a guy like you. You’ve got quick instincts and some impressive test scores.’

‘Didn’t know you held onto those.’

‘Well, I’ll have you know, yours were pretty memorable.’ Pike looked down his nose at him. It should’ve only been half as effective, but Jim felt pinned in place like a scientific specimen being prepped for dissection. ‘I knew a Kirk myself, once. He managed to do a hell of a lot with only _half_ your aptitude.’

Jim sat up straight. It was as effective as if Pike had turned his phaser on him, stunned muscles pulled taut to span tense, tight connections from joint to joint. It was stupid, a dumb thing to get caught up on. Jim should’ve seen it coming a mile away, but San Francisco was all steep hills. The roads didn’t stretch out flat forever like they did in Iowa so it was easier for stuff to creep up on him.

That didn’t mean he had to like it.

‘Yeah,’ Jim said, ‘and look where that got him.’ It wasn’t the answer Pike wanted; Jim knew before the words were out of his mouth. Part of scoring high on a test was knowing how the guy grading it wanted you to answer. ‘Hate to break it to you, but I’m not looking to wind up on the wrong side of the Narada just because a couple old guys think I’d look good playing hero.’

‘Jim.’ He’d gone far enough to stir Spock’s intervention. ‘You must admit that you were inspired by some greater purpose to convey me to Starfleet.’

‘Even if that _was_ true,’ Jim replied, ‘which it isn’t, you’re here. Conveyed. Purpose fulfilled. I gotta…I gotta get back to Iowa.’

Even as he said it, he knew he’d gone one too far. If there was anything Spock wasn’t gonna swallow, it was a whopper about how much Jim wanted to get back home. He knew Jim better than that. Not some other, better version of Jim, but _him._ Personally.

What a pain in the ass.

Spock and Pike shared a look Jim liked even less than the rest of their implications, with Pike’s eye asking _Is this punk serious?_ and Spock’s eyebrow replying—what else?— _indeed, captain, it would seem that he is not in jest_. But even thinking the word _captain_ in Spock’s voice made Jim shiver. He’d stopped sweating, but he was as clammy as ever.

San Francisco didn’t agree with him—just like Frank always said it wouldn’t.

‘That all being said,’ Pike continued, ‘it’s not as though I can _condone_ a thing like this, much less do what I can to support it, if I don’t have some kind of liaison in control I can trust. Somebody whose allegiances I know lie with Starfleet, even if they aren’t wearing the uniform. That’s no offense to you, ambassador, but I only met you this morning, and even you’ll have to admit—your story is one hell of a crazy thing. Now, it’s not as though signing the guy I have in mind on is gonna be easy, mind you. All these years and _he_ still hasn’t joined up with Starfleet, either, because he’s been too busy looking after everything at the Vulcan embassy.’

‘If you are speaking of Spock, your consulting scientist,’ Spock said, ‘then I have reason to believe I shall be singularly able to convince him of the logic inherent in the mission.’

‘There’s that word again.’ Pike shook his head and sighed; Jim didn’t want to agree with anyone in the office at the moment, but he came close to sympathizing with Pike before reminding himself that Pike was one of the two forces currently ganging up on him. His sympathy leeched out after that like air from a punctured tire. ‘Well, that’s all well and good, Ambassador Spock, but something tells me it’s Kirk here who’s still reluctant. Doesn’t think he’s up for it, I’m guessing. Would rather play it safe back in—where was it again? Iowa.’

‘Oh my God,’ Jim said. ‘That’s the best you’ve got? More reverse psychology? Thinking you can goad me into something totally insane because you’re insulting my pride?’

Pike shrugged. ‘Did it work?’

It was Jim’s turn to shake his head, feeling his mouth form an o shape of disbelief, coupled with a hearty dose of pure annoyance. ‘OK: you’ve got balls,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll give you that.’

‘Had ‘em whether or not you’d given ‘em to me, Kirk,’ Pike replied, ‘but I’ll take that as a compliment all the same. Admit it—you’re interested.’

‘Anything more than that, I’d have to be insane.’ Jim realized he couldn’t lie with both Spock and Pike pinning him between them. ‘What are you even— You seriously want me, some old Vulcan, and your best scientist to do _what_ , exactly?’

‘A little plan your pal cooked up. Something to stop the Romulan threat for good. Open up the skies again. Return an old, noble purpose to Starfleet—the way things were before this mess.’ Pike glanced to his window. Outside, there were rescue and evac crews grouped on the green, dotted blue uniforms passing between twenty or so makeshift cots, set up to monitor the cadets who’d inhaled too much smoke or whatever ailed them. There were plenty of ailments going around, enough for everyone. ‘The ambassador here says he knows the interior of that ship. And it _might_ be possible to follow whoever planted the bomb in the generator room while the trail’s still hot— _before_ they’ve gotten off world—all the way back to Nero.’

‘Consider the facts, Jim,’ Spock began, then paused. ‘Consider...what you know to be right.’ Spock paused again. ‘Barring that, consider the possibility of chartering a private ship to travel the great expanse of space at high speeds toward unknown dangers.’

‘You _are_ crazy,’ Jim said.

‘That was not ample time for true consideration,’ Spock replied. ‘Nor, I must add, was it a response to my suggestion.’

Jim sucked in a breath, pinching the front of his torn t-shirt between his thumb and his forefinger to get some fresh air—whatever passed for it in Pike’s office—on his skin. It made his muscles tighten. He remembered the name in his dreams, _Jim_ , and the heat behind that younger Spock’s eyes, the way he’d seen himself from Spock’s perspective—not to mention how good it’d felt to blow clean through his low expectations.

He’d defused that bomb. Him, alone. His fingers. His hands. There were rusted engines waiting for him in Riverside; there were stars beyond the dome. The answer should’ve been obvious, but Frank’s voice echoed to him.

_Who the hell do you think you’re fooling, kid?_

‘I’m gonna need another shirt,’ Jim said. ‘This one’s all torn up.’

‘That can be arranged, I’m thinking,’ Pike replied.

‘First,’ Spock added, ‘we must make a brief stop at the Vulcan embassy.’

*


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amanda Grayson appreciation fanclub.

If San Francisco had been a world away from Iowa, then the Vulcan embassy grounds were galaxies away from Frank’s house in Riverside. Crazy to think that the same planet could offer both places on a single globe, but there Jim was, passing even more security checkpoints to get in than he’d been put through on the academy campus.

Vulcans were an endangered species, after all. And, considering all that logic they were so obsessed with, it made sense they’d be exceptionally careful with what few of them were left.

Spock showed no signs of being tired, despite how old he had to’ve been, whereas Jim felt like he could’ve slept for days in the blink of an eye. Adrenaline was the only thing keeping him on his feet—that and the tingling in his fingers, the promise of what had to be the most half-cocked plan in the history of the Federation.

Which might’ve been why the more Jim thought about it the more he was starting to like it. The opportunity to go after the Narada, to do what Starfleet hadn’t been able to for years—in theory, it worked.

What Jim liked less was the idea that somebody else was gonna be in charge. Somebody with a funny haircut and a flat voice who looked at Jim like he was something on the sidewalk nobody wanted to step in, who still looked at him that way even _after_ Jim’d saved his life.

Twice.

‘Fancy,’ Jim told Spock when they were finally given their clearance passes and let inside the complex proper. Paved streets, pale buildings, heating lamps set up every few feet, no sign of trash anywhere, and a scattering of Vulcans—most of ‘em older than the younger Spock—on terraces or attending business. They glanced Jim’s way when he passed by; their faces registered none of the disapproval Jim knew they had to be feeling. He stuck out like a sore thumb in his leather jacket and scraped jeans and torn t-shirt, his hands stuffed in his pockets, his hair messy, while they looked like images straight out of a painting in an encyclopedia definition. Not a hair out of place; not a wrinkle in their robes.

Spock, on the other hand, fit in perfectly. There’d never been any doubt that he would. He’d folded his hands into his sleeves and walked with purpose and all Jim could do was follow, which was getting to be a pattern.

Jim didn’t like that one bit either.

There was a time when he would’ve said it was the worst thing in the world to know people were looking at him funny, but it was actually worse—way worse—to feel like they’d seen him but hadn’t really noticed him at all. And that was closer to what it was like walking through the streets of New Vulcan, or whatever they were calling this little area of the city. _Vulcantown_.

No one gave Jim a second look; the first ones barely landed before they passed over him like the shadows of hovercars moving overhead.

Jim had let Spock take care of the address, since it was written in complicated Vulcan script. He figured he could’ve decoded it if he’d been given a week or so, but since that was time they didn’t have, he was letting Spock take the lead. Again. Vulcantown wasn’t too friendly to outsiders, at least when it came to having its signage written in Standard.

Jim got it—they were hyper-vigilant about preserving their culture thanks to how close it was to dying out. But they sure didn’t make it easy to get around. Not knowing where to turn probably discouraged tourists as much as the eight checkpoints they’d had to pass through and even more than the forbidding stone gates around the compound.

Jim had to wonder whether there were any Vulcan kids around who felt like they were being brought up behind bars. It couldn’t have been fun for them and kids were kids; Vulcans couldn’t be that serious from birth. Everything he’d seen from the crowded buildings to the neatly-swept streets suggested a totally sanitized environment, almost like a museum display or a theme park.

The survivors of Vulcan had made it out alive, but Jim wondered if they could actually call this living.

Not like it was up to Jim to judge.

Maybe they liked all the peace and quiet.

Jim plucked at the torn collar of his shirt, loitering under a heat lamp while Spock lingered at the nearest corner. It was cooler out now than it had been when they’d first arrived, fog and an accompanying chill rolling in off the bay. Spock squinted up into the gray-laced sunlight, pointing to a building across the street, kitty-corner from where they were standing.

‘There,’ he said.

Jim couldn’t venture a guess as to how in the hell he’d found it. There were no signs on these residential streets, just plaques on the houses themselves, each one a seemingly random stream of numbers with a squiggle at the end—and none of the squiggles matched the other squiggles on the buildings directly next to them.

‘Finding a needle in a haystack wouldn’t happen to be a _Vulcan_ expression, would it?’ Jim asked.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Spock said.

‘Never mind.’ Jim hitched his shoulder, rolling the stiff muscle where he’d slammed into Spock and then the floor. ‘So this is it?’

It was a nice place. Tall, austere, made of steel and glass so it’d bake all day long if the sun hit it just right. It looked like a real high-rise instead of one in a set of tiny, flat houses that’d been stacked on top of one another.

Jim remembered all of Pike’s comments about how well they’d paid Spock for his services. It made sense he’d live in the posh part of Vulcantown.

He certainly had the attitude for it.

They crossed the street at a diagonal, which didn’t seem very Vulcan-like, but Jim didn’t ask the old man about it. After all, hedidn’t always seem very Vulcan-like, either, which was somehow still only half as frustrating as the times when he reminded Jim just how Vulcan he was.

The building was manned by security and a doorman out front; they scanned Jim’s thumbprint while Spock explained the situation, who they were there to see, all the usual stuff. He managed to sell them on it better than Jim would’ve; Vulcans trusted their own kind. But they rode with them in the elevator in silence, letting Spock and Jim off at the top floor.

The corridor was silent, carpeted, with only a few doors to the right and left—which Jim figured meant the apartments behind them had to be massive. Spock led Jim to the end of the hall, then stopped like he thought Jim was the one who was supposed to know what to do.

‘Well?’ Jim said.

‘I believe a knock is customary,’ Spock replied.

‘Okay,’ Jim said. ‘So knock.’

Spock gave him a look. It might have been _the_ look. Capital L, even. Jim tried to give it back with the same intensity but he was starting to get a headache—or starting to remember the headache he’d gotten about a hundred miles ago—and he had to surrender without putting up his usual amount of fight, rolling his arms and his shoulders at the same time, throwing up his hands.

‘It is only polite, after all,’ Spock added, ‘to issue the inhabitants of this domicile ample warning to prepare for unexpected visitors.’

‘It’s not the knocking that’s the deal here.’ Jim tapped the flat of his fist against the door, using his frustration as the impetus to make it happen before he could think about what might be waiting for them on the other side. ‘It’s who’s _doing_ the knocking I was taking issue with. You lead the way and I knock—is that how it’s gonna be?’

Spock raised a brow. Jim would’ve laughed at how unexpectedly silly the expression was but the door had already opened under his hand, which was still half-raised. He hadn’t even heard the patter of footsteps from within to warn him somebody was coming.

Of course he’d be caught halfway between action and inaction, just like he always was. The only surprise there was that it wasn’t Spock who’d caught him. Not this time.

It was a woman—not too old, maybe not much older than Jim’s mom would’ve been if she was still seeing birthdays—but she was all gray beneath a collection of soft headscarves, also gray, with fine lines flanking the corners of her mouth and eyes. Jim recognized those lines. They weren’t the kind you got from laughing all the time. She was wearing shadows the same way as she wore the scarves—wrapped around herself from all sides—and she looked quickly from Jim to Spock behind him to Jim again without judgment, simply taking in an unfamiliar sight.

Jim cleared his throat. ‘Uh,’ he said, which wasn’t right. ‘Ma’am. We might have the wrong—’

‘Are you here from Starfleet?’ the woman asked. She was quiet, but she was quick. ‘If you are, then you must be here to speak with my son Spock.’

‘Your—’ Jim blinked. As still as the woman’s face was, her eyebrows weren’t doing the Vulcan thing, and there was something about the eyes beneath ‘em that said she was definitely human. Even the way she held her mouth—giving nothing away but visibly hiding everything important—suggested there weren’t pointy Vulcan ears under the scarves she was wearing.

‘Lady Amanda Grayson,’ Spock said behind him. Suddenly, the old guy’d found his voice, or remembered he’d been the one who promised Pike he could smooth things over, Vulcan style, to make their crazy little mission happen.

The lady—Spock’s completely human mom, if Jim had put the pieces together correctly—shifted in place, taking a single step back from the doorway. ‘Why, yes—but I’m afraid you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t _quite_ recognize you.’ She paused; Jim saw a faint line of concentration form in her brow before it faded. ‘Though you do look...familiar.’

‘We have not met as such, Lady Amanda.’ Spock held up his hand; Jim thought _live long and prosper_ before he could stop himself. ‘Forgive us for intruding upon your home and your privacy, but you are correct in assuming that we wish to speak to your son regarding a matter that can only be classified as urgent. We met him for the first time earlier today, during the course of certain...troubling events.’

‘Oh; I see.’ Amanda clasped her hands together and Jim noticed tension in the way she held them. There was something about that; it made Jim want to leave her alone so she wouldn’t feel bothered by the imposition, but it also made him want to step forward and stand between her and the world outside the door. The worst part was how little sense it made, how it came out of nowhere and stayed with him for no real reason. ‘Then—are _you_ the young man who saved my son’s life?’

‘His name is Jim Kirk,’ Spock said, while Jim fought off an old urge to scrape the heel of his sneaker across the floor. ‘He acted this afternoon in what must indeed be considered an exemplary fashion when he stepped between your son and a Romulan assassin.’

‘Jim Kirk,’ Amanda repeated. ‘Yes; that was the name. Jim Kirk.’ There was a wealth of warmth in the way she said it that infused the scarves she was wearing and their shadows with an equal heat; Jim realized there were shades of faint pink and purple among them and he hadn’t noticed that until the moment the woman wearing them changed, from a shadow herself to someone alive. Alive because she was glad to see him; alive because of what it meant to her to be speaking his name. Jim swallowed. He didn’t think anyone needed Vulcan hearing to catch the ugly gulping noise his throat made. ‘Jim Kirk—oh, I am very glad to see you. _So_ glad to meet you, and to have this opportunity thank you myself. Won’t you please come inside? You have all my hospitality—all my gratitude.’

Jim didn’t have time to answer, to tell her not to make a big deal of it, since Amanda’d already reached out to touch his arm, gripping it with unexpected strength. She held him there, then gently pulled him closer, until they were standing face to face. Amanda had to lift herself onto the balls of her feet in order to do so, but she wrapped her arms around Jim’s shoulders and embraced him with a single, swift inhalation.

She was slim and had a slight build, but her arms were as strong as her hands and she smelled like clean, warm laundry, cotton heated by sunlight as it dried on the line.

Jim closed his eyes—little more than a prolonged blink, really, although it wasn’t as if anybody was keeping count.

When he opened his eyes again they weren’t alone in the hall. Old Spock was behind him and Young Spock was in front of him, stepping out from an unknown room to observe the proceedings with his hands clasped behind his back and his eyebrows dark, his eyes even darker.

‘Mother,’ he said.

Amanda stiffened; Jim could feel her shiver. She patted the back of Jim’s head, smoothing down his hair, smoothing the leather at his shoulders. ‘Oh,’ she said again. ‘Your shirt—did this happen today? Come; let me find you something else to wear. This will hardly do until it’s mended.’

‘Uh,’ Jim said again. His voice had abandoned him, possibly for good, knocked out of his chest like the breath in his lungs when he’d tackled Spock to the floor. He was going to have to ask whether that was all in the family—he couldn’t strictly call it Vulcan, because Amanda had it too. The lack of oxygen to his brain made all the necessary connections short out. He could barely remember what Amanda had asked him, let alone how to formulate a verbal response. He could feel Spock watching him over her shoulder, daring Jim to say anything stupid in front of his mother; after all, Spock hadn’t exactly seen Jim at his best, just when he was mouthing off and coming down off an adrenaline high. Then again, Jim had no idea what his best was, or if it even existed. ‘Yeah,’ he managed at last, ‘it happened today.’

‘Spock,’ Amanda said, ‘you’ll be good enough to show our other guest to the sitting room, won’t you? I’m going to see if we have anything suitable to make Jim Kirk a little more comfortable.’

‘Of course, mother,’ Spock replied.

He managed to convey, without a shift in his expression or the hint of a whine creeping into his tone, that leaving his mother alone with Jim Kirk, of all people, was the last thing on Earth he was interested in doing. But he inclined his head toward Old Spock anyway, who didn’t so much as lift an eyebrow before leaving Jim behind and heading down the hall.

So obeying Amanda was something done without question.

Jim could appreciate that.

Some of the pressure leeched out of the entry hall as they left, two Spocks occupying the same apartment but somewhere else, at least. Jim sure breathed easier once the pair of them were out of sight, since he couldn’t fathom having to explain to Amanda why there were two versions of her son hanging around all of a sudden and one of them was probably three times as old as she was.

There was a certain poetry in that: one version had brought Nero down on the galaxy when the other one had schemed up a way to keep him at arm’s length. Amanda would’ve been proud, maybe, if she didn’t hit _crazy_ first and get stuck there.

‘You don’t have to do that.’ Jim found his voice, even if it was too late for sounding polite. ‘The shirt, I mean—it’s fine. I’ve worn worse. Way worse.’

‘Be that as it may,’ Amanda said, ‘I see no reason why you shouldn’t have something a little better _now_.’

There was complete confidence in her voice, a tone that brooked no argument. Jim’s nose tickled; he waited until she’d turned her back to scratch it with a rub from the back of his hand.

She led him deeper into the apartment, past the sitting room where Jim could see two Spocks waiting: one of them with dark hair and a pair of eyes on him that only _felt_ like they could bore twin holes in a standard grade security door; one long since gone gray, who _had_ bored through Jim’s skull to set up camp inside Jim’s brain.

There was no telling which was worse. When Jim thought about being paired up with the two of them for some kind of desperate, off-the-books, unofficial Starfleet mission where the stakes were gambling for no less than the survival of an entire planet, he felt like he was back in the generator room, spotting the charge for the first time, before he recognized it as something he could disarm.

It was an explosive situation, no two ways about it. Jim was caught between a Spock and a hard place. His mouth twisted. He wiped his nose again.

Amanda opened a door near the end of the hall and stepped into the darkened room behind it, flicking on the lights and beckoning for Jim to follow her. The décor was more colorful than it’d been in the main hall and the sitting room—deep reds and steel blues, accents of rich fabric in the curtains and the plush throw over the bedspread. It wasn’t a master bedroom, but it didn’t look like Amanda’s, either. Then again, Jim didn’t really know her well enough to make that call. It was a hunch and nothing more.

‘Let’s see…’ Amanda turned back to Jim before he was ready, sizing him up in a look that wasn’t Vulcan. It was gentle but thorough, measuring without weighing an ounce. ‘You’re not quite as tall as my son, but you’re a bit broader in the shoulders. I’m sure we can find something that will do.’

Jim glanced around a second time, now that he could recognize all the elements of the room for what they were. It didn’t make sense, considering the Spock—the Spocks—Jim knew, but there it was. This place, complete with a fancy stringed instrument and what Frank’d always referred to as _whorehouse curtains_ , was Spock’s room.

‘Something tells me—’ Jim paused on the word _ma’am_. ‘—Lady Amanda, that your son wouldn’t be _too_ happy having _me_ in his room.’

‘Perhaps not.’ Amanda opened a closet and stepped inside. There were sweaters and jackets hanging inside next a few short, cape-like things that made Jim want to laugh without actually helping him to feel like laughing. He pictured himself wearing one of them and the feeling came more easily, only the desire was already gone. ‘But, since you saved his life, I cannot see how such a territorial instinct, in the face of expressing a proper and authentic gratitude, would be...logical.’

Jim ducked his head. He couldn’t argue with that. The half-human stuff was starting to make other things make sense, things he never thought he’d be able to sort out. Spock being not-quite-Vulcan explained why he didn’t act quite Vulcan, and some of the unsettled tension between Jim’s shoulders had started to ease at the thought.

Strange, how his memories hadn’t conveyed that. Just a sense of distance, of not belonging. But it’d been expected, so normal to Spock’s existence that it’d been a part of the natural scenery, present without comment.

‘It was just,’ Jim began, staring hard at his feet and the patterns on the rug surrounding them, ‘what anybody else in my position would’ve done. Lady Amanda.’

‘Regardless,’ Amanda replied, ‘you _were_ the one who did it.’

‘Wrong place, right time. Story of my life.’

‘The story of so many lives, I believe. Wouldn’t you agree?’ Amanda turned, holding a collection of sweaters to her chest.

Jim shrugged. He’d never felt so helpless. He certainly wasn’t the hero Amanda was treating him like, and considering she had a good head on her shoulders, he had no idea why or how she could be so blind to the obvious truth about him.

In a home like this, Jim stuck out like a sore thumb—and not just because he was wearing a smelly, old t-shirt that’d been ripped in two places. If he’d been dressed right, if he’d shown up prepared, no matter what he’d done in advance or what tricks he had under his belt, he never would’ve been at ease. Not here. He was outclassed and he knew it. Amanda should’ve known it, too; anything else would’ve been pulling the wool over her eyes, and Jim didn’t want to do that, not to her.

‘You see,’ Amanda continued, looking somewhere over Jim’s shoulder, her eyes distant, sadder because they weren’t outright sad, ‘I lost my husband, Spock’s father Sarek, many years ago. Vulcan was destroyed and the life I had chosen went with it.’ She spoke with an equal distance as her gaze. It give Jim chills. The idea of being so calm about losing so much was pure Vulcan; on human lips, Jim was as jealous as he was creeped out. If only it was that easy for everybody. If only they could all be that successful. ‘As I am well acquainted with personal loss, Jim Kirk, I find myself doubly grateful when I am not required to experience it again.’

‘The story of so many lives,’ Jim mumbled, almost forgetting to blink.

‘Quite so. My son is very important to me. And I _am_ grateful, Jim. You protected him when he needed protection. I am grateful.’

‘Jeez,’ Jim added. His throat felt like he’d swallowed motor oil.

‘Yes,’ Amanda replied. ‘‘Jeez’ does seem to cover it. What do you think about this shirt, Jim?’

Jim had to look up; fortunately, Amanda’s face was hidden behind the shirt she was offering. Jim reached out before thinking, running his callused fingers over the fabric. It looked rough but it was actually soft and Jim’s fingers tightened. Anything to get out of this place. Anything to stop feeling Amanda’s grief when she wasn’t even showing it. Anything to escape feeling like wrapping his arms around her might help when he knew they were strangers and knew that it wouldn’t.

‘Thanks,’ Jim said. ‘Looks fine. Looks great. Neck hole, arms—couldn’t ask for more.’ He winced. ‘That was— I meant that. Sounded like I didn’t, but I did.’

‘Gratitude is a complex emotion.’ Amanda turned so that she was facing the unlit closet, giving Jim his privacy. ‘Difficult to express; even more so to comprehend. We are at our best and our worst when called upon to share it, as well as our most vulnerable. There are many times when a simple ‘thank you’ does not seem sufficient. Yet we do not know what is, and so frustrate ourselves with our inability to share what is most important to us.’

Jim didn’t know how to respond to that, so he busied himself with changing instead. He got caught in what he’d thought was a sleeve but wasn’t and, before he knew it, Amanda’s hands were guiding him, setting him free to breathe the warm, filtered air.

‘Is it comfortable?’ she asked patiently.

‘Sure,’ Jim replied, ‘it’s comfortable. The question is, does it make me look like a wannabe Vulcan?’

He realized too late what he was trying to do. He was trying to make her smile. And they both knew it; they also both knew that there was no way to win that scenario.

At least she was kind enough not to point it out or anything.

Amanda nodded politely. ‘I’m sure you don’t have to worry about looking Vulcan, dear.’

‘It’s the hair, right? Too messy. Does Vulcan hair even _get_ messy? You’d think—logically—it’d have to _sometime_. But then, I’ve never seen it happen.’

‘I cannot say that it is a common occurrence, no.’

‘OK, but that’s just rude. Makes everybody else feel inadequate by comparison. So is that something they do on purpose, or is it...’ Jim tugged at the hem of the sweater, straightening it out over his stomach. Spock was taller but Jim was wider; it worked, despite the odds of it not working. ‘My mom and dad,’ Jim continued, not even aware the words were coming out, certainly not able to stop them, ‘they were there, you know. When the Narada went after Vulcan. They were on the USS Kelvin. Acting Captain George Kirk. The Kelvin—it wasn’t one of the ships that rescued who they could from the planet. The Kelvin was the ship that made sure those rescue ships had time to get away with the survivors. You, I guess. You and your son. You were probably on one of those ships, but the Kelvin...’

‘Yes.’ Amanda reached out and touched the back of Jim’s hand, fisted in fabric. Jim froze. ‘Yes, I remember the USS Kelvin.’

She held his hand; Jim lost track of the time, how many minutes passed, holding her hand with both of his own, practically clinging to it. He kept having to blink for reasons he couldn’t explain.

Then, out of nowhere, he remembered Spock’s eyes and how dark they’d been. How downright _pissy_ , despite their rigid logic, their insistence on a lack of emotionalism. Jim was holding Spock’s mom’s hand and he was going to do something illogical if it went on for too long—of that, Jim could be certain. It was the only thing he could be certain of anymore.

‘Thanks,’ Jim said finally.

‘Thank _you_ , Jim,’ Amanda replied. ‘Shall we rejoin the others?’

‘Yeah,’ Jim said. ‘Sounds good. Good plan. Let’s do it.’

The others, they discovered, were exactly as Jim and Amanda had left them. And, exactly as Jim’d been expecting, Spock’s dark eyes did the burning thing, trained on Jim the moment he stepped over the threshold with Amanda’s arm in his.

‘That is my shirt,’ Spock said.

Old Spock lifted an eyebrow.

‘Indeed, Spock,’ Amanda replied. ‘If the shirt fits...’

‘That is not the traditional application or interpretation of that human idiom.’

‘Nor is today very traditional, all things considered.’ Amanda gave Jim’s arm a squeeze. Jim squeezed her back. Spock continued to stare. ‘It _does_ fit him, Spock. And he _was_ in need of a shirt that _wasn’t_ torn by his actions in saving your life. A life I hold dear. Very dear indeed.’

‘Compliments,’ Jim said, voice rough. ‘Bad for me. For somebody with my personality.’

If he’d heard that from Frank once, he’d heard it a thousand times.

‘Is that so?’ Amanda glanced up at him. ‘Whoever would say such an unpleasant thing?’

‘An unpleasant guy,’ Jim admitted. ‘So what’s, what’s happening here? Top secret Vulcan stuff? No new shirts on either of you, so it’s gotta be something different.’

‘I was merely discussing the particulars of our incipient journey with Mr. Spock,’ Old Spock said. Jim had no clue how he had the self control to keep from referring to him as one of a half-dozen nicknames Jim had thought up on the way over alone.

Short Stack. Half Pint. Junior. _Baby_.

Maybe that last one was more Jim’s style, said in a rough whisper that wouldn’t fly in front of his mom and the older, grandpa version of the guy. Jim had stood in other sitting rooms before, but he couldn’t remember any with such a specific crowd.

‘Journey?’ Amanda sat on one of three small, ornamental couches. Its black feet curved out from beneath its cushioned seat like a desert beast on the prowl. Her arm was still through Jim’s, which meant she’d pulled him down with her.

Now all four of them were seated; it didn’t make Jim feel any less like the party crasher, the human elephant in the room, the wolf in Vulcan’s clothing. At least the high neck didn’t strangle him as much as he suspected one of the Starfleet uniforms would. Instead, it was soft and cowled; the fabric split over his shoulder like a scarf.

Personally, Jim was willing to bet he couldn’t have been the first guy to mess up and claim that for a sleeve.

Then again, since as far as he knew only Vulcans wore Vulcan clothes, maybe Jim wasthe first idiot to pull that mistake.

Lucky for him, Lady Amanda had quick reflexes and she didn’t hold her tongue. With Jim’s big head, there was no telling where he could’ve got stuck if she hadn’t stepped in to save the day.

‘Yes.’ Spock—the young one—clasped his hands in his lap. He took his eyes off Jim’s face to observe his mother; Jim felt their absence like passing away from one of the scattered heat lamps that lined the streets of Vulcantown—a welcome breath of fresh air from the suffocating heat, but for whatever reason, he missed it once it was gone. ‘It is the intent of Jim Kirk and his...associate to embark on a mission of recovery for the Federation. In the attack, we were given reason to believe that one of the Romulan operatives may have managed to obtain, and escape with, the schematics for Earth’s defensive grid.’

‘The one you designed.’ Amanda’s arm tightened through Jim’s.

‘Quite so, Mother,’ Spock acknowledged. His face was smooth, like they were discussing Spock’s academic contributions, not the fact that they’d been pillaged by the wrong, Romulan hands. ‘It is Captain Pike’s recommendation that my presence would be invaluable to the mission, given my familiarity with my own blueprints.’

‘Naturally,’ Amanda said.

‘I have, of course, declined their offer.’

‘What?’ Jim leaned forward on the couch, boots braced on the floor. ‘Hang on, Spock. Pike was pretty clear—this mission won’t fly without you.’

‘I have already been informed of the parameters of your instructions.’ Spock’s dark eyes met his, then found the spot at Jim’s elbow where it was still laced through Amanda’s. They’d both forgotten to let go. Or maybe there was still some small part of Amanda that sought out human solidarity in a room full of Vulcans. Even if both of those Vulcans were her son—singular, not plural. ‘It would require me to make an extended off-world voyage. Surely you must have already wondered why I have declined to this day a full Starfleet commission, despite being readily qualified for the position.’  

‘Figured you must’ve thought you looked better in black,’ Jim said.

There was no viable way for him to lean back now without drawing the full wrath of Spock’s attention, so instead he held his ground and shot a grin Spock’s way for good measure.

He didn’t get any reaction this time. Not so much as a lifted eyebrow.

‘No one better understands the threat of open space travel while Nero pilots our galaxy than a Vulcan,’ Spock said, ‘and, as such, I have a responsibility to remain here and maintain supervision of the Earth’s defenses in order to protect the Vulcans now inhabiting it.’

‘You have a _responsibility_ to make sure nothing happens to those defense schematics the Romulans poached,’ Jim retorted. ‘Otherwise, I can guarantee you, there’s not gonna be much left to protect here on Earth.’

‘His logic is sound,’ Old Spock said. Finally, he’d decided to join the fray. And Jim had finally settled on what to call him— _Spock Prime_ over _Spock One-Point-Oh._ It sounded good. It fit. It was simple and uncomplicated and made Jim’s head hurt less, so he was all for it. ‘And his passion does not negate the facts. In this instance, I believe it speaks positively of his character.’

‘He is a character, indeed,’ Spock replied.

‘Spock,’ Amanda added.

Silence fell over the room. It was a superpower; there was nothing cruel or hard about the way she said her son’s name but it commanded attention and respect through different means than fear. They were gifts and they were freely given. There was honor in that—and a kind of love.

The hairs on the back of Jim’s neck stood on end—or tried to, only they met with the heavy fabric of the Vulcan cowl and never managed to get there.

‘Mother,’ Spock said at last, ‘I cannot abandon my duties here—my duties to all that remains of Vulcan.’

‘Nevertheless, it must be done, and it is clear you must be the one to do it.’ Amanda’s fingers dug into Jim’s arm and Jim covered her hand with one of his own. His palm was too big and too rough to be of any use, but he remembered the way she’d held onto his fingers in Spock’s room and it seemed like the right thing to do. Spock’s eyebrows tightened, not quite narrowing. Jim swallowed. ‘I trust the two of you will look after my son to the best of your abilities?’

‘Mother,’ Spock repeated.

‘The best possible way to protect your mother now,’ Spock Prime said, ‘is to secure her livelihood by preventing the actions of those who would seek to destroy it. To do that, certain uncertainties must be risked.’

‘Your logic is also sound.’ Spock paused. ‘And, perhaps, no less passionate. I find myself asking the following question: what does this say about your character?’

‘On that matter,’ Spock Prime replied, ‘you do not yet have the requisite data to come to a complete conclusion.’

‘Mother,’ Spock said again, ‘neither you nor I have received any real assurances. Neither have these two individuals presented us with any real credentials. They are strangers; they are not members of Starfleet or of the Federation. Though their logic is not without merit, we cannot assume that they will prove effective or trustworthy allies on a mission of this importance.’

‘No; that _is_ true. We’ve no idea what might happen. They can make no promises, and neither can you.’ Amanda drew a deep breath. Only Jim was close enough to hear it; she’d obviously learned how to hide these simple feelings, probably because she was surrounded by Vulcans on all sides. Human beings adapted to their environment or they broke down, never to start back up again. Jim had figured that one out better than anyone. ‘I know only that Jim Kirk saved your life before, without knowing anything about you. I can trust that, if nothing else.’

‘Then you believe it is desirable for me to do as they suggest and accompany them on this mission?’

‘Desirable?’ Amanda almost smiled. ‘Oh, Spock—no. Not desirable. Not that. But I believe it’s right for you to do as they suggest. And I also believe it’s something you _must_ do.’

‘I’ll look after him,’ Jim promised. ‘Seems to me like I’m good at that.’

‘I am capable of ‘looking after’ myself,’ Spock replied.

Jim shivered, playing it up for effect. ‘Did it get cold in here all of a sudden, or is that just me?’

‘It remains to be seen,’ Spock said simply, ‘what you know of responsibility, Jim Kirk.’ Jim’s name sounded like icicles on his tongue. ‘Nonetheless, if you are certain of the decision you have made, Mother, then I shall begin the necessary preparations to depart.’

‘Yes.’ Amanda maintained her posture even though Jim could feel through her touch how much effort went into the act. ‘Yes, Spock. See that you do. I know you’ll be careful when you must—that it’s only logical you will be, until occasion calls for risk to be taken. I also know that luck is hardly a logical factor in any Vulcan’s life, but I’ll wish you—all three of you—good luck just the same.’

‘You have my gratitude, Lady Amanda,’ Spock Prime said.

‘I do hope you know what you’re doing,’ Amanda added privately, meant only for Jim to hear, as she turned to whisper the secret in his ear.

‘Me too,’ Jim told her.

But—like most humans he’d met—he didn’t have a goddamn clue.

*


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uhotty arrives.

In the end, Jim left his t-shirt behind with Amanda, telling her he’d be back for it, accepting her promise to have it mended by then. When Spock Prime said he had an idea or two about how to get off-world and a lead or two that they could follow, Jim wasn’t surprised to discover he wasn’t surprised.

‘Are you certain this is the path you desire to follow, Jim?’ Spock Prime asked, when they were already on their way.

It wasn’t the best time to ask a question like that, and Jim said as much. ‘Are _you_ sure?’ he added.

‘Of some things, yes,’ was Spock Prime’s cryptic reply.

Spock himself didn’t speak much, but Jim hadn’t been expecting him to. Conversation was going to be worse than the unknown, he told himself, and for a while, he almost had himself convinced that bad attitudes and sour looks were the worst of what they were up against.

As they approached an unfamiliar neighborhood of the city—Jim behind the wheel of the Stingray, ferrying two Spocks who weren’t pulling their make-shit-less-awkward weight—Spock sat up even straighter in the back seat, something Jim hadn’t thought was possible.

‘We are currently in a district where illegal bargains are struck,’ he said.

‘Yes; that is true,’ Spock Prime replied. ‘A statement of such obvious fact is not necessary—and therefore not logical.’

‘You intend to leave Earth and its orbit on a mercenary ship?’

‘Your deduction, based on the evidence, is correct.’

‘Oh my _God_ ,’ Jim said. ‘This is the worst conversation ever. Yeah, we’re doing something illegal. That’s the whole _point_. Starfleet can’t do it, so we have to. Did you think it was gonna be easy, Spock?’

‘Difficulty and criminality are not strictly synonymous,’ Spock replied.

‘And doing the _right_ thing isn’t _strictly synonymous_ with doing things the _right way_ ,’ Jim said.

It bought him a few brief moments of triumph until he realized he was fighting on Spock Prime’s side, which was more of the same old trick the guy’d pulled on him from the start. He wasn’t on anybody’s side, Jim reminded himself. He was on the not dying side. He was on the get into outer space quick side. He was on the nothing’d better happen to my Stingray while it’s in storage side.

He was on his own side because somebody had to be, even if the stakes were shaky and the rewards few and far between.

‘We cannot be certain,’ Spock Prime informed him.

‘Could you maybe _not_ do that?’ Jim told him.

Even he wasn’t sure what he meant by ‘that’—whether he was talking about backing him up or just staying out of his head for five seconds. Jim got it. They were connected and there was nothing he could do about that. So it seemed to him like the politething to do would’ve been to at least pretend like it wasn’t happening.

That was sure as hell what Jim was trying to accomplish. So far, success was middling to below average.

‘We’re not gonna, like, walk into the bar and pick up the first pilots we see, though,’ Jim said, when the silence went on for a little too long. There he went again, caught picking up the slack. Nobody else was even trying, but he looked like the dumbass because he sucked at it. ‘We can’t do that. Because you can’t judge _anyone_ until you’ve seen what they’re flying.’

‘I saw fit to conduct some preliminary research on both a likely crew and an appropriate vessel once our need for one was made apparent,’ Spock Prime replied.

‘Uh huh.’ Jim glanced over his shoulder, checking to make sure Spock was keeping pace with them, that he hadn’t gotten disgusted and darted away down the nearest dark alley. ‘And how’d you do that? Freelancers don’t _exactly_ store their rankings in a neat little Federation database.’

‘I have found that the years bring with them a wealth of experience regarding all manner of unexpected topics,’ Spock Prime said. ‘I believe another way of putting it would be to say: I have my methods.’

‘An evasive answer.’ Spock didn’t meet Jim’s eye; he didn’t seem to know Jim was looking. ‘If one could even call it an answer at all.’

‘I must cite age once again as the cause,’ Spock Prime said. ‘Alongside its many benefits, it has a way of enhancing certain peculiarities.’

‘Not among Vulcans,’ Spock said.

‘No,’ Spock Prime acknowledged. ‘However, it is a particularly human trait.’

Jim loped on ahead, not looking to get caught in the crossfire between a pair of Vulcans with just a little too much shared history and not enough common ground.

The sidewalk in this part of the city was muddy off the main streets, as if the cement never got the chance to dry out from the last big rain. The buildings were crowded together and plenty tall, so that the structures got top-heavy and almost seemed to tilt over onto each other. Bright neon signs lit up the sidewalks, eliminating the need for streetlamps; Jim picked up on a deep, steady bass-line emanating from one of the nearby clubs. It reverberated through the streets, between the slick walls, caught in the back alleys. On any other night, Jim might’ve welcomed the escape, the tantalizing combination of foreign bodies crushed against his own and a fog of liquor occluding his more conscious thoughts.

But right now, the vibration reminded him of the echoes from the explosion on the Academy campus, which in turn reminded him of the reason they were here.

No time to fool around.

It was probably for the best, considering Jim couldn’t have spent a night on the town with a worse crowd when it came to having fun.

‘What am I looking for, old man?’ Jim side-stepped around a puddle, avoiding a collision with a pair of cadets who were barely on their feet and swaying from right to left.

‘Our current destination is a bar called Vega Nine,’ Spock Prime said. ‘My contacts have assured me that it is the establishment most often frequented by our potential pilots.’

‘Potential.’ Jim glanced over his shoulder. ‘You haven’t even _talked_ to these guys yet?’

‘The timing of our conversation holds little bearing on their acceptance,’ Spock Prime replied. There was a flashing, green sign at the end of the street: Vega Nine, done up with white stars. ‘They _will_ agree to ferry us.’

‘You sound very certain of that,’ Spock said. ‘Whatever you plan to bargain with must be highly valuable.’

‘Oh, in a manner of speaking,’ Spock Prime’s eyes reflected only the lights from the street. ‘It does not entirely belong to me.’

Jim tried to meet Spock’s eyes again. A little solidarity when it came to a mutual pain in the ass could go a long way. Spock’s dark eyes, not necessarily as old and wise as Spock Prime’s but reminiscent of some of the memories the mind meld had brought with it, were a factor in that equation, too. If Jim could get a good look at them, he told himself, then maybe he could draw a few lines in the sand.

Not that he was one for boundaries and sticking to his side of the bargain, but he needed to make distinctions. He needed to stop thinking he was catching sight of something that didn’t exist, practically giving himself whiplash from turning around too fast—just not fast enough to see it.

But Spock didn’t meet Jim’s eyes. The light from a nearby bar sign flickered, pale green, over the side of his cheek, making him look sharp and beautiful and, maybe not surprisingly, alien. This wasn’t somebody Jim knew. Whether or not he wanted to know him had no bearing on the situation; he was going to be tougher than a few drinks and a casual line of introduction. Hell, he was already tougher than _saved your life, remember that_ for an ice-breaker, and the challenge made Jim’s chest cold, his gut warm.

He could’ve used a drink, only something told him the old guy wouldn’t approve.

‘How about this,’ Jim said, after Spock Prime’d pointed Vega Nine out around a corner, main entrance charmingly hidden next to an overflowing dumpster, ‘why don’t you two let _me_ do the talking?’

‘Considering your conversational assets,’ Spock replied, ‘that does not provide the wisest course.’

‘Oh my God. Did you just— You haven’t spoken two words and you’re criticizing _my_ conversational assets?’

‘Less,’ Spock pointed out, without even batting a dark eye, ‘can often be considered more, to employ a favored metaphorical statement among your people.’

‘Just tell me what we’re bargaining with, here.’ Jim turned to Spock Prime, who looked as out of place in a dive like Vega Nine as Jim had been at an institution like Starfleet Academy.

Still, there was something about the way he ducked through the door Jim was—despite himself, on instinct he didn’t recognize—holding open for him that made sense beyond the sum of his parts. Classy old Vulcan, classy robes, classy posture, but despite the obvious, he didn’t look like he _didn’t_ belong, either.

‘I do not doubt your conversational assets, Jim.’ Spock Prime took a swift survey of the room. ‘Ah,’ he said, having seen something he’d been looking for. He was still holding all the cards—and Jim was still holding the door. He let it swing shut behind him, shoving one hand in his pocket and keeping the other free just in case anybody got territorial or said something about pointy ears or whatever. Jim’d joined enough brawls over a comment about pointy ears or an extra pair of eyes or a fuzzy tail to know that when humans got drunk, they thought getting rude made them any less small, any less scared.

It didn’t. They could puff themselves up all they wanted and still be chicken-brained small-town losers tossing slurs at an alien over a sweating glass of beer.

Humanity’s best and brightest.

But Jim couldn’t help himself, couldn’t keep himself from trying to peg the guys they were here after. Pilots, Spock Prime’d said; plural. He followed Spock Prime’s gaze to a short guy whose hair looked like it got pulled at on the regular and a tall woman who was so far out of his league she might as well’ve been on Ceti Alpha V, not in Vega Nine. Jim pursed his lips.

‘Montgomery Scott and Nyota Uhura,’ Spock Prime said.

Jim knew those names. He knew those people.

It only took him a handful of seconds and a quickened heartbeat to realize why he knew them.

After that, the prickle of nostalgia turned into the drip of cold sweat. Another feeling that wasn’t his; another moment that never would be.

‘More friends of yours, huh?’ Jim’s mouth twisted on an ugly, empty feeling. ‘Needless to say, they aren’t gonna know you _here_.’

‘Indeed not,’ Spock Prime agreed. ‘It is therefore fortunate that my knowledge of _them_ can still be employed to facilitate smooth proceedings.’

‘You’re a sneaky old bastard,’ Jim said. ‘You know that?’

Spock Prime didn’t answer him, probably because it was too undignified. The word _bastard_ didn’t suit him, not exactly, but Jim couldn’t figure out what did. He could feel Spock’s eyes on the back of his neck, which was already flushed from a combination of the familiar atmosphere and the half-familiar not-quite-strangers at the end of the bar. Now he had Spock staring at him on top of everything else and the corner of his left eye twitching whenever Montgomery Scott— _Scotty_ , a voice echoed at the base of his medulla oblongata or whatever—laughed and Uhura joined him.

‘They look like they’re having a, uh, good time,’ Jim added. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t interrupt—’

But Spock Prime was already striding across the bar toward them.

So much for subtlety. Vulcans had logic on their side; they didn’t need to grease the wheels.

‘He and his methods are equally unusual,’ Spock said.

Jim turned to see him standing with his hands behind his back; if Jim hadn’t known better, he would’ve called the slight flare of his nostrils an expression of distaste. Condescension, at least, wasn’t an emotion, so it was possible Vulcans could indulge in a little of that when they had the chance.

‘He’s not your average Vulcan,’ Jim said. ‘Then again... Neither are you.’

‘I am aware of our common interests.’ Spock’s clasped hands hid the slight curve of good posture at the small of his back, just above his hips. Jim hadn’t meant to stare; it’d happened naturally, and he’d never bothered fighting nature before. ‘He has explained to me the highly illogical facts of his presence here, as well as our...shared ancestry.’

‘In a manner of speaking,’ Jim said.

Spock’s eyebrow barely lifted but Jim counted that one as success. ‘Indeed.’

‘Hey,’ Jim began, starting to turn, but he didn’t get the chance to go any further. At his end of the bar, Montgomery Scott had cursed—loudly, colorfully, in a way that made Jim’s ribcage tighten around his lungs. It was an echo from another place, another time. Another assault on Jim’s senses. He clenched his jaw to keep from grimacing, his molars aching. ‘ _Jesus_.’

‘I cannae believe it!’ Scotty’s voice carried, followed by gasping laughter, hope mixed with delight standing on the precipice of disbelief. Jim was drawn in; he stepped closer. ‘My God—ye’ve got yourself a deal, old man! An equation like this—it’s bloody unbelievable, that’s what it is! And here I am...well, out an’ shoutin’ about it in public where all the least savory denizens of San Francisco can hear me do it, too. Well, tha’s—tha’s just brilliant!’

‘A potential tactical error,’ Spock agreed.

‘Lucky you boys aren’t hiring us for _his_ brains,’ Uhura said.

She was all smooth planes, a pair of high cheekbones and a long, sleek ponytail that twitched like a whip when she tossed her head. Jim’d been expecting her to have shorter hair. When she grinned, it looked more like an expression of dominance rather than genuine amusement.

Uhura put her boot up on the edge of the stool Jim’d grabbed for himself—and Jim saw it was black leather, worn and cuffed over the knee. There was a phaser in her thigh holster.

Jim got caught checking to see whether it was set to stun.

‘ _Well_.’ Scotty inclined his head toward her. His face was red, either from laughing or drinking or both. ‘Technically, my dear, I believe this very fine and very, _very_ old gentleman _has_ appealed to my...what was it you called it once? Ah, tha’s right. My _considerable intellect_.’

‘Considerable intellect aside, my partner here doesn’t always know a good deal when he sees it,’ Uhura said, addressing the group at large. She sized Jim up first, a little too quickly, Jim thought, then Spock next to him. ‘But I _can_ trust his eye when it comes to scientific equations.’

‘Maybe we’d better move this discussion somewhere a little more private,’ Jim suggested.

It wasn’t his turf and it wasn’t even officially his operation. But Pike had wanted Jim on board for a reason and Jim could guessit had something to do with the instincts he’d displayed—instincts that were currently shouting at him to get the hell out of Vega Nine before someone decided that Scotty was more than just another idiot running his mouth. Jim had already spotted a couple likely suspects stirring with interest; he could spot ‘em by the way they wouldn’t look over, but how they were sitting straighter in their seats at the same time, attention drifting toward the table occupied by Spock, Spock Prime, Jim and their pair of pilots. They honestly thought they were being subtle, but it was impossible not to notice the crazy party happening right out there in the open.

‘Oh, aye, like our hangar you mean?’ Scotty flinched, just a few seconds before Uhura slapped him upside the back of his head. They had their timing down, Jim had to give them that. ‘Well, it’s not _ours_ in the strictest sense. _Technically._ We’re rentin’ the space while we sort out a bit of a…licensing issue. In that ye need money to pay for a licensing fee and we haven’t got it.’

‘Which is why we’re just _thrilled_ to be taking on another job without payment up front.’ Uhura put her hand over Scotty’s and leaned back like a snake about to strike.

Between two Vulcans, Jim didn’t favor his odds as the obvious weakest link. Even if one of the Vulcans was an old man.

‘I can assure you that Starfleet will value the information I have imparted to Mister Scott quite highly,’ Spock Prime said.

‘And I just have to hope we’re both talking about the same kind of value,’ Uhura replied.

‘Trust me, darlin’, Scotty said, ‘this is _light years_ beyond what Starfleet’s got its engineers working on. I put this into the right hands and we’ll not only have our own spot in the hangar, but a Federation commission as well.’

He kept on like that, counting his chickens and his eggs and the chickens inside ‘em and _their_ eggs, while the group stood and Uhura paid their check. Spock hung back behind them and Jim hung back behind Spock, keeping pace with Spock Prime, nodding toward him to grab his attention.

Spock Prime raised his eyebrow, a glint of gray in the dark of the club.

‘Aren’t you worried you’re gonna like... _mess up time_?’ Jim mumbled the words into his shoulder, pretending to glance back toward the hot bartender. It was a question he’d asked before, more or less. He still hadn’t been given a decent answer.

‘No,’ Spock Prime said. ‘On the contrary, I am attempting to right that which you yourself once suggested I have already wronged. The timeline has suffered due to my arrival—my interference. It will continue to fluctuate unless someone with a considerable knowledge of the framework attempts to put things to right.’

‘Uh huh.’ Jim licked his teeth. They tasted like cheap whiskey and salted peanuts. Hell of a dinner, but at least it was one. ‘You sure you’re not just reuniting your old crew because you feel nostalgic, old man?’

‘Nostalgia.’ Spock Prime paused and Jim realized he was holding the door open for him. _Again_. Instinct and good manners weren’t supposed to go hand in hand as far as Jim knew. But considering how vast the galaxy was, how small Vega Nine was compared to the darkness just outside the neon light strips above its door, what Jim knew couldn’t be measured anymore without using a microscope. Spock Prime passed him with purpose, which was why the moment he paused—half in the bar, half out—Jim knew it wasn’t about logic. If he hadn’t known any better, he would’ve said it was about dramatic effect. Something like humor; something like personality. ‘That is an emotion with which most Vulcans are not familiar.’

‘You didn’t even _try_ to answer my question that time,’ Jim said.

‘No,’ Spock Prime agreed, ‘I did not.’

*


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spock and Jim flirt. Haha. Just kidding. (THANKS SO MUCH FOR READING YOU GUYS! ;;)

The hangar bay Scotty and Uhura’s spacecraft was docked in was definitely illegal—a fact Spock couldn’t help but inform them of, then remind them of, what felt like every step of the way.

And there were a lot of steps, including an agonizing ride in a creaky old turbolift that made Jim think back on defusing a Romulan bomb fondly as ‘better times’.

‘Oh, yes,’ Scotty replied, still buoyed by the good mood of whatever timeline-shattering equations Spock Prime had shared with him in order to butter the guy up. ‘ _Incredibly_ illegal, I’d say. _But_ it’s not as though there’s any _legal_ way to do what it is you’re asking, now is there? Besides—we wouldn’t even have a need for the legal if it weren’t for the illegal, after all. Wouldn’t even think about it. But then, when you put it tha’ way, you wouldn’t have the illegal without the legal, so _there’s_ a moral conundrum for you gentlemen, isn’t it?’

‘Matters of philosophies aside, Mr. Scott,’ Spock replied, ‘it will be necessary that I inspect your spacecraft before we can allow ourselves to undertake the proposed journey on board.’

‘Now wait just a _minute_ , laddie.’ Scotty stopped in his tracks, then rethought the strategy of calling a Vulcan laddie, then rethought rethinking the strategy with a shrug—as if to say, now that the damage was done, there was no way of going back in time and fixing it. Not everybody could look at life that way. Jim watched Spock watch Scotty, although out of the corner of his eye he could see that Scotty wasn’t grinning, not anymore. ‘In matters of _my_ ship, I can assure you, you’ll not find anything that _isn’t_ ship-shape and ready to take on _any_ proposed journey, regardless of its so-called _magnitude_.’

‘The question also remains, given the locales you appear ready and willing to frequent, as well as your own lack of moral conundrums where matters of philosophy are concerned,’ Spock said, ‘whether or not the spacecraft is indeed yours at all.’

Scotty’s chest puffed out and he drew himself to his full height. Jim caught Uhura rolling her eyes behind him but even she was giving Spock an eyebrow raise of her own that actually managed to come close to the Vulcan way of shriveling your balls with a single arched brow. Jim felt it, icy and scary-fun at the base of his spine. ‘She’s mine, all right. She’s _all_ mine.’

‘I am well versed in the specifics of mechanical construction, Mr. Scott. I am not challenging your human masculinity by suggested that a second inspection is standard procedure in all off-world voyages.’

‘Haven’t blown myself up yet, now have I? Or I wouldnae be standin’ here arguing the silly business with _you_ in the first place!’

‘That you have not managed combustion as of yet is not a reassurance, Mr. Scott.’

‘OK; OK.’ Jim couldn’t take it; he had to intervene. As fun as it was watching them measure the space between them like two prize fighting roosters—as happy as Jim would’ve been to place bets on who’d come out on top any other day—their mission had stakes and those stakes were real. Even if there were parts of Earth that didn’t need saving, that wouldn’t thank you for saving them, that would’ve better served the universe by drifting like so much dust between the stars, there was plenty that _didn’t_ deserve that kind of treatment. The danger that’d always been lurking in the backs of their minds, ever since the Narada’d blown into their lives through a rift in time, had drawn closer. And there was no way in hell Jim was letting them win. ‘I’m sure you both have—what was it, Uhura? Considerable intellects? _Huge_ ones, the two of you. Massive. You can measure ‘em if you want once we’re on the ship and we know where we’re going.’ Jim paused, glancing over his shoulder at Spock Prime, who was watching the proceedings like he was at the movies. ‘We _do_ know where we’re going, right?’

‘I have specific coordinates. This will not be an easy task,’ Spock Prime confirmed. ‘The matter of your payment will rest solely in your ability to perform this task.’

Uhura snorted. ‘You don’t have to doubt our ability to perform _any_ task. We do all right for ourselves. We do _better_ than all right.’

‘So why doesn’t Scotty—why don’t you and Spock check out the engines and Uhura and I will get everything else ready, and you...’ Jim swallowed that same, hard lump that stuck in his throat whenever he looked Spock Prime’s way. ‘You can do whatever it is you do best. And plug in those coordinates.’

‘I believe that I was recruited in order to take charge of this mission and ensure that no one involved be led astray,’ Spock said. ‘As, the ambassador notwithstanding, I possess clear seniority here, it would be most advantageous to avoid any difficulty regarding wounded egos to follow the example of tradition.’

‘By chartering a stolen ship to chase after a Romulan assassin?’ Jim’s laugh sounded ugly in his own ears. ‘What about this, exactly, says _traditional example_ to you, Spock?’

‘Wait a moment—ambassador?’ Scotty asked.

‘Romulan assassin?’ Uhura added.

‘We would do best to begin preparations for departure,’ Spock Prime said. He didn’t have to raise his voice to command attention. The depth of that tone made Jim’s stomach hurt and he tried to shrug it off, cowl-neck suddenly too tight.

‘I hope this isn’t the time we _finally_ get our fingers caught between the bricks,’ Uhura told Scotty. ‘You—blue eyes—come with me. And don’t touch _anything_ with those ham hands of yours, all right? Just watch and try to learn.’

‘I’m a fast learner,’ Jim promised.

‘Uh-huh.’ Uhura didn’t even bother with another raised eyebrow, like Jim wasn’t even worth the effort. ‘That’s what _all_ the slow learners say.’

Jim grinned, letting the smile work for him. With someone like Uhura, another retort was only gonna prove her point for her. He’d do better with her if he flew under the radar; too bad that had never been one of Jim’s strong suits.

 _Keeps his head down_ hadn’t been a comment on any of Jim’s school report cards.

Uhura led him up the ramp and into the belly of the ship’s hull. It was standard industrial, a modest engineering bay tucked next to where the landing gear folded in. The ship’s engines were already thrumming with a warm, steady glow. They were louder than Jim would’ve thought for such a small ship; Scotty hadn’t been lying when he’d bragged about her.

She might not’ve looked like much, but she had some power under the hood.

‘No civilians below deck,’ Uhura said. She gestured to the level they’d come in on, ponytail twitching as she faced front. ‘Scotty’s got a _thing_ about the warp drive. We don’t ask, and we _don’t_ get involved.’

Jim nodded, turning to follow her without looking first. That was a mistake, since he wound up turning a second too late, slamming his head smack into a low crossbeam, the steel catching him against the temple. He pushed his fingers into the point of impact, waiting for the daze to pass—waiting for his brain to quit bouncing around the inside of his skull, like one of the steel balls in the old pinball machines he’d rigged for winning to impress strangers from out of town. He squeezed the bridge of his nose against the sting of the rebar glancing off his face, bracing himself for the throbbing he knew would come next.

 ‘Smooth move, blue eyes,’ Uhura said. She was watching, because of course she was watching. Jim would’ve had eagle eyes on any stranger boarding _his_ ship for the first time.

The way he saw it, anyone who didn’thave that instinct couldn’t hang onto their ships for long.

Jim rubbed the side of his head, temple to jaw, squinting into the low lights that lined the interior corridor.

‘Sorry,’ Jim said. ‘Didn’t realize this thing was built for guys more your boyfriend’s size.’

Uhura gave him a sour smile. There was a flair to the way she pushed the button to call the turbolift.

In short, she was loving this.

‘The bridge.’ Uhura pointed to the top button on a set of three, glowing round and blue on the turbolift’s controls. Jim memorized the sight of the engineering bay, vision blurring when the doors snicked shut in front of them. ‘And _that’s_ off-limits to civilians too.’

‘Listen,’ Jim said, ‘I don’t know how much the old guy told you, but we aren’t _exactly_ civilians.’

‘You work for Starfleet?’ Uhura folded her hands behind her, watching Jim sidelong as the turbolift rose.

‘Well, no.’

‘You have a rank? Insignia?’ Uhura asked.

‘No, but—’

‘Then what _exactly_ is your definition of civilian?’ Uhura stepped out when the lift stopped, boots echoing along another steel corridor, illuminated from above with bright track lighting.

‘Well, I’m not exactly flying on a Federation ship, now am I?’

Jim followed her past a couple round doors set into the walls. Quarters were less cramped on this level, with a wide room on the starboard side that opened onto an observation port. There were couches set around and an empty bar counter—clearly forming some kind of common area where the captain and first officer could kick back once the course was plotted. It was just enough room to share with two Vulcans.

Or two versions of the same Vulcan.

Uhura stood by the window. Right now, all it looked out on was the darkened interior of the hangar bay.

‘Montgomery Scott is the greatest recruit who _ever_ dropped out of Starfleet,’ she said. ‘He screwed up, _once_ , and they were gonna ship him away to the ass-end of the galaxy, freezing that big old brain of his off on some _rock_. In case you haven’t noticed, he doesn’t _exactly_ have enough hair to keep his head warm. So he left. Never looked back. But don’t get us wrong, blue eyes. Just because _we’re_ not in reds doesn’t mean we don’t know how to run a ship to Starfleet standard.’

‘Duly noted,’ Jim said.

‘This is the passenger deck.’ Uhura turned away from the window. ‘Private quarters are back that way; this here’s the lounge. You’ll be getting _real_ familiar with it for the duration of your voyage.’

‘Because of the ham hands.’ Jim held them up. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t touch a _thing_.’

‘It’s our ship, our rules,’ Uhura agreed. ‘We call the shots, not you. And you know why that is? It’s because _we’re_ the ones with our lives on the line for this. Your friend, the old Vulcan, managed to strike up a pretty sweet bargain, but if this goes south at _any_ time...’

‘Then all Starfleet standards go out the airlock, along with any unwanted passengers—am I right?’

Uhura stepped past him with a one-shouldered shrug. She smelled nice—and another rogue thought caught Jim by surprise, because the smell wasn’t just sweet and spicy, but also recognizable. Familiar. He’d caught that scent on her before except no, he hadn’t; it was another echo in time, another memory that wasn’t his, another sensory flag that shouldn’t have been raised in the first place.

Uhura finally tossed an eyebrow his way, looking at him sideways like she knew, not like she thought, he was crazy. Jim’s jaw tightened. ‘Something tells me, Kirk, that letting you know you’re right at _any_ time is dangerous for _everyone_ around you. Am _I_ right?’

‘Guess you’re gonna have to wait and find that one out for yourself,’ Jim said.

‘You be good now,’ Uhura finished, her back already to him. She rested her hand against the open door for a moment, pausing in on the threshold before the hallway, but she didn’t turn around. ‘Whatever you think the definition of good is, chances are, it’s not good enough. I _will_ be watching you. I’ve got eyes—and especially ears—everywhere on this ship. That goes for all of you, Vulcans included.’

‘Yeah, but you can’t herd cats or Vulcans,’ Jim said. ‘Which is actually kinda funny, since Vulcans are descended from—’

But Uhura was already gone with a graceful wave over her shoulder and a cheerfully muttered something in Klingon that Jim wanted to recognize. As it stood, he was free to interpret it in countless ways, although no matter what you said in Klingon, it always came out sounding like _Eat shit and choke on it, ugly pile of trash._  

Gorgeous language. Took all kinds of skill with the tongue. Must’ve been something to be on a Klingon date murmuring sweet, murderous nothings into Klingon ears.

Jim glanced over at the untouched couch. His hands were empty, his shoulders tight, his skin too warm under the high-quality weave of the Vulcan fabric that still smelled like heating units and laundry detergent and a private, quiet, shadowy little home. He tugged at the collar and felt the ship, the steel flooring beneath the soles of his boots, start to hum as its engines powered on, fuel cells sparking to life.

A few of the strip lights flickered and steadied and Jim had no clue what he was doing here—not far from home, because Riverside had never been that—but far from the center of earth’s gravity.

As good as it felt, maybe it felt too good. Too free. Too many possibilities, as wide and open and dark as the sky at night.

Yeah, it was the same sky Jim’d watched for years—climbing out his window after jimmying it open past midnight so he could lie, quieter than a field mouse, on the rooftop in peace and loneliness and pure dreaming—was about to be all around him. It was what he’d wanted for years, in a restless, unfocused way—so of course now that it was rushing to meet him, now that he was rushing to meet it, his palms were clammy and this tongue twelve sizes too big for his throat.

That kind of promise was something a guy could choke on if he didn’t learn how to swallow it.

 _Eat dreams and choke on ‘em._ Popular Klingon proverb.

Probably.

Easy to let that get under your skin when everyone else on the ship had their place. Scotty was the one in charge; Uhura was the one in charge of Scotty. Spock was the one in charge of the mission and Spock Prime was the one who was in charge of knowing what the mission was.

Jim was just caught up in their tractor beam, the ambient gravitational pull of Spock’s presence like a star. He was a vestigial appendage, even. A relic. A replica. He was there because of somebody else, so of course he was _feeling_ like somebody else.

He would’ve napped on the couch, kicked his legs up and tossed his head back and shielded his eyes from the light with the crook of his elbow, but the things he saw while sleeping weren’t good for escape. Not that they’d ever been. They showed him too much and too much of it real, without ever being his reality.

Jim pinched the bridge of his nose again. His temple was throbbing. There were a few computer terminals in the corner of the rec room and Jim sat down at one, pulling up a Klingon dictionary with an application that offered record-and-playback pronunciation assistance.

It turned out, despite the odds, Uhura hadn’t told him to eat shit and choke on it. That was the first thing Jim asked it to teach him.

He was on _Your mother has a smooth forehead_ when he realized he wasn’t alone anymore, a shadow falling into the room from the sleek, clean hallway. They were already underway, ride choppy while they ducked and dodged through the various tripwires for the defense nets, Jim’s colloquial Klingon getting passing grades according to the dictionary program. He didn’t know how far they were. His fingertips were practically burning but he was learning Klingon, teaching himself the phrases he’d need to get by.

‘That,’ Spock said from the doorway, ‘is an insult. No Klingon would appreciate the statement.’

‘S’why I’m learning it,’ Jim replied, slouching back in the chair with one elbow hooked over it in an attempt to look casual. It almost worked. He almost believed it himself. ‘So, uh... NuqDaq ‘oH puchpa’’e’?’

‘You just inquired as to the location of the bathroom.’

‘It’s the only one I get an A+ on, pronunciation-wise. Must be something about my tongue.’ Jim pressed his tongue against the backs of his teeth, keeping Spock in his periphery the whole time. ‘You checking up on me, Spock, or did you come to apologize for offering the worst conversation in the history of ever?’

‘I am not the one who began a conversation in Klingon about restroom facilities,’ Spock pointed out.

‘Hey, _hey_. At least I’m trying.’ Jim swiped his dry lips with his equally dry tongue. ‘You get kicked out too, huh?’

Spock blinked. Jim could’ve guessed the answer to a dumb question like that was no, that Spock didn’t know what it was to be kicked out of anywhere. All the Klingon must’ve been messing with Jim’s instincts.

‘No kicking has yet occurred to my knowledge,’ Spock replied. ‘Is there some reason you are expecting such action to take place?’

‘No, nothing in particular.’ Jim shrugged, like he hadn’t given it all that much thought. ‘Just seems to me like Uhura’s _real_ particular about non-crew members on her ship.’

‘I have flown aboard many vessels, both Starfleet regulation class and beyond,’ Spock said. ‘I have found that the behavior of most captains and first officers does not rely on rank or affiliation to be needlessly proprietary.’

‘Ouch.’ Jim acknowledged the burn, whether Spock knew he’d made one or not. The rest he filed away for later, information about captains and their ships, stuff he’d never learned because you couldn’t get it out of a book or an old video-slide about your dad, documentaries about the things that’d changed you when you weren’t there to see ‘em yourself. ‘So you _did_ get kicked out.’

Spock looked at him, eyes dark and watchful, like Jim was an equation with the numbers out of order and he had to concentrate to get all the pieces back into their proper positions. Jim felt and resisted the urge to smooth the wrinkles out of his shirt—Spock’s shirt; the shirt Lady Amanda had put on him like it could ever belong to him, like she didn’t think twice about treating some strange human who’d just fallen off the truck as one of her own.

Sure, Jim had saved her kid’s life. But that still didn’t make him anyone to her. And looking at Spock now, it was pretty easy to tell he wasn’t regarding Jim with the same kind of easy, open gratitude. He didn’t exactly have his mother’s eyes.

Spock’s mouth opened and Jim leaned forward, hitching one of his legs up ankle-over-knee.

Spock’s mouth closed. Jim tried not to groan with the disappointment.

One of these days, he was gonna get somewhere with that—somewhere further than feeling like his own front door’d just slammed shut in his face.

‘I would appreciate the opportunity to discuss certain parameters of our current situation,’ Spock said.

He didn’t sit down and Jim didn’t get up from the terminal to move somewhere with a table, someplace two people would be able to share a friendly conversation. He might’ve been able to do it with Spock Prime, but it was hard to feel like he had anything to hide with a guy who’d poked around inside his brain.

ThisSpock still saw Jim as a wiped databank, something fresh and empty. He’d filled in a few assumptions by knocking Spock out of a Romulan assassin’s range and defusing that bomb—that he was smart and that he was reckless—but those details weren’t a lot to go on as far as personal knowledge went. And as far as Jim saw it, he had the upper hand, what with the discreet slideshow of heartwarming family memories that was running like a projection loop through the back of Jim’s head.

He knew—or he could guess—more things about Spock than Spock knew or could guess about him.

Also, Vulcans didn’t go in much for guessing.

‘All right.’ Jim braced his elbow against his thigh, nodding for Spock to go on. ‘Shoot.’

Spock raised an eyebrow. Jim made a finger gun and aimed it in his direction.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve _never_ heard that expression.’

‘No,’ Spock said. ‘But even if it were an entirely new experience, I would still find the human propensity for inventing unnecessary colloquialisms wearisome.’

‘Someone’s gotta keep the language fresh.’

Spock tugged at the hem of his tunic, pulling it straight. ‘The purpose of language is communication,’ he said, ‘not freshness. May I begin?’

Jim grinned, enjoying this now that he’d somehow managed to wrest control of the conversation in his favor. He didn’t have any delusions that it’d stay there for long, so he had to make the best of it while he could. He waved a hand magnanimously, bidding Spock to go on.

Spock inclined his head in thanks. Even that seemed sour somehow.

‘To begin, I would strongly advocate a greater level of discretion than has currently been displayed regarding the purpose of our mission. There is no need for Captain Scott or Uhura to be aware of the situation with Nero and our defensive matrix.’

‘No more blabbing about Romulan assassins,’ Jim said. ‘Got it. You _sure_ you don’t want to include the old man on this? Have a little mission briefing, just the three of us?’

Spock’s mouth twitched. It was swift, just at the corner, a shadow flickering over his face like they’d broken atmosphere and were already shooting past the last, illuminated point of Earth’s defenses.

‘He is another topic of discussion I would seek to address.’

‘How long you think it’ll take to get wherever we’re headed?’ Jim asked.

‘I cannot calculate the duration with any accuracy as I remain uncertain of our projected location.’

‘The point is, if you wanna talk about the old guy, we’re gonna need... _weeks_ to get through everything. _Months_ , even.’ Jim forced himself to lean back, to fall into old, bad habits that were nothing if not comfortably uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, if Vulcans ever use this phrase or what, but he’s a real piece of work.’

‘By your own admission, you arrived in San Francisco with him by your side,’ Spock said. ‘I had surmised from contextual evidence that the two of you are, at the very least, a part of the same team, working toward a common goal.’

‘The common goal part you’ve got right.’ Jim watched Spock from under his eyelashes, still sizing him up. He was different from every single angle, always a new sight as well as a familiar one. Sometimes, it was like staring too long without blinking at the sun; sometimes it was like trying to fill in the dark side of the moon during a waning cycle. ‘The rest, though, I gotta say it: you’re _way_ off the mark.’

Spock lifted a brow.

‘Not used to being wrong, huh? Yeah, I know the type.’ Jim let himself grin; he knew it’d come off as cocky. But knowing a thing and letting that knowledge make you a better person weren’t one and the same, especially not as far as illogical humans were concerned. ‘He’s... Like I said, he’s a real piece of work.’

‘The specifics of his arrival here are without recorded precedent,’ Spock agreed.

Jim tried the single-eyebrow thing again and wound up tilting his head to the side instead. ‘You think? How much did he tell you, exactly?’

‘As much as he believed I was required to know in order to perform the duties expected of me.’ Spock paused. ‘As Captain Pike would not have requested I accompany you unless my presence was strictly necessary, I will not question his wisdom in this matter—nor will I question the wisdom of a Vulcan who is my senior. I know that he is not lying about who he is or where he has come from; he cannot do so, not even with a measure of humanity in his heritage.’

‘So he told you stuff about the thing.’

Spock’s eyebrow rose even higher. ‘Clarify.’

‘ _The thing_.’

‘That was not a clarification.’

Jim had to bite back on a groan. ‘Come on, what other thing could it _be_? The he’s-you-and-you’re-him thing. _That_ thing.’

‘You lacked specificity the two prior iterations.’

‘Uh, _contextually_ , it was pretty obvious,’ Jim said.

‘There are few enough points of reference in our limited acquaintance that context has not yet been established. Furthermore, your erratic behavior suggests that judgments based on previous standards will never be fully reliable.’

Jim waved his hand again. ‘OK, Spock. OK. That’s enough about me. Let’s get back to talking about you. _Both_ you’s. The old you _and_ the young you. And how do we know that the two of you meeting isn’t going to cause wormholes and singularities and all _kinds_ of screwed-up time-travel bullshit that’ll fuck with our timeline for good, anyway?’

‘Once again, the lack of recorded precedent—’

‘Precedent, _whatever,_ that’s not— You can’t tell me it’s not weird as _hell_ for you,’ Jim said.

Apparently, Spock couldn’t even tell Jim that it _was_ weird as hell for him. He fixed Jim with another gut-curdling expression that Jim already knew all about but still felt like he was seeing for the first time. He had to blink to get rid of the impression of another scene, another rec room, another lifetime superimposed over the one he was living. A few rough blinks and an equally rough swallow and Jim was back in the awkward present, Spock still trying to pierce his intestines with a single stare.

‘Okay, maybe you _can’t_ tell me anything,’ Jim said. ‘But you believe him and that’s what’s important here. He told you he was you from another place in time and Vulcans don’t—can’t?—lie, so we’re all on the same page. Maybe he’s crazy, but _definitely_ he’s telling the truth.’

‘Captain Pike trusted him with a task of great importance. It is imperative that this mission succeeds.’

Jim snorted. ‘You don’t have to tell _me_ that.’

‘Your understanding of the matter is less clear. I cannot trust it as I would trust my own.’

‘Was that— Did you just insult me?’

‘I spoke the truth. If you found it insulting to hear, you would not be the first human to react in such a fashion.’

‘Huh. _Huh_.’ Jim could feel himself bristling, heat lighting up at the base of his spine. ‘He might be crazy, but he’s sure as hell nicer than _some_ Spocks around here I could mention.’

‘This is a discussion of facts as they pertain to our mission. It is not small talk. Its purpose is not to provide comfort or engender feelings of pleasure.’

‘Good thing _you’re_ not the ambassador,’ Jim said.

‘My father was once an ambassador,’ Spock replied, so simply that Jim almost missed the biting edge of ice underneath the words. ‘However, he is deceased, and I myself have no intentions of pursuing duties I must place before those I owe to my race.’

It was a heavy thing to talk about and Jim cleared his throat, torn between reactions he didn’t understand and ones he _really_ didn’t want to have. He uncrossed his legs and recrossed them the other way and focused on a strip of dimmed fluorescent lighting until his vision was streaked with blinding light. ‘We’re saving Earth,’ Jim said finally. ‘Or at least we’re trying to. And we might be the only idiots who can. It’s not like we can just ignore the problem when we know what we know. So we’re chasing a Romulan down with a couple of hired mercenaries who don’t like us too much. What could go wrong?’

Spock blinked. It was a brief, small thing, something that shouldn’t’ve stood out as much as it did, but Jim noticed it—almost like he was waiting for it to happen. Almost like they knew each other, or like they were supposed to.

‘Statistically,’ Spock replied, ‘the odds that something will not go wrong would be far more easily presented.’

‘You don’t actually have a number.’

‘Approximately nine-hundred-and-fifty-point-three-seven to one,’ Spock said.

Jim leaned forward, drawn in like a moth to the flame. ‘ _That’s_ approximately?’

‘I rounded up,’ Spock replied.

‘’Course you did,’ Jim said.

He wondered if there was anything to be gained from shooting a quick message in Pike’s direction. _Hey, how are you, had any recent psychotic breaks I should know about?_ That sort of thing. Jim knew the thought was disloyal. Pike had a good head on his shoulders from what he’d seen. He made do with what he had to work with and he was smart; he didn’t judge people based on whether they looked like they’d been sleeping in their cars for four days or if they said they were a Vulcan from an alternate dimension.

Those qualities were rare in a guy. Unfortunately, they were also the same qualities that could make a perfectly respectable Starfleet captain decide to put Earth’s fate in the hands of some totally unqualified people. That was the corner Pike’d been backed into, the decision he’d made with his shoulders square against the wall.

Jim wasn’t about to argue the point. He couldn’t say what he’d have done different because he didn’t have the experience necessary to call those shots.

Anyway, he could see the sense in the plan. Spock was Starfleet’s golden boy, even if he was all dark, smoky looks and forbidding posture—not much golden there—and Spock Prime had the advantage of years and wisdom, not to mention that he knew more about Nero and the Narada than anyone else. Jim had—well, potential, probably. A pair of hands that were good in a pinch, if you needed to defuse a sloppily-constructed charge. A face that’d take a few Romulan hits before he went down. When worse came to worst, he could be the disposable guy who stood between the enemy and the allies who could actually make themselves count.

Those were his assets. If Uhura and Scotty brought anything to the table, they were elements Pike hadn’t accounted for. He’d been so confident they’d get a ship that he hadn’t offered provisions himself. He couldn’t have even if he’d wanted to, since they didn’t want to get tripped up on a technicality, caught out because someone had been able to trace their movements back to Pike.

Nothing they were doing was sanctioned by Starfleet. That meant freedom, but it also made Jim like he’d missed a step somewhere going down, like he’d rolled over one night as a mechanic and woke up in the morning as a mercenary.  Seemed like the kind of thing people wrote home about—at least for the people who had homes.

‘You tell your mom what we’re doing?’ Jim asked.

The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. Even among humans it was an invasion of privacy, so Jim had no idea how he was expecting Spock to take it. Jim had only just met the woman. She’d given him a shirt; she’d taken him in; she’d thanked him for what he’d done. At no point had he earned the right to ask about her. But here he was, asking about her anyway.

Spock bristled, his back straightening like Jim had taken another shot at him with his finger phaser.

‘My mother has been informed of the basic stipulations of my absence.’ His gaze on Jim was weighted, the same as the promise of dark clouds gathering over a corn field. Jim knew that attitude, Vulcan or human. He was daring Jim to say more, to give Spock a reason to unleash the storm. ‘She has not been given cause to worry needlessly over this mission.’

‘So you lied to her,’ Jim said.

‘Vulcans do not—cannot—lie,’ Spock replied. ‘A fact that has already been established—one you yourself already know.’

Jim wriggled, made restless by Spock’s stiff posture and pinned under Spock’s unrelenting gaze. He didn’t like Jim much, but he could’ve done a better job of hiding it. That seemed like the polite thing to do, especially considering they were stuck together.

‘Look, it’s not an accusation. Hell, I would’ve lied to my mom, too,’ Jim said.

He wasn’t about to fall for that technicalities bullshit; he figured he’d better lay that much down straight off. Jim knew the difference between right and wrong and he knew the difference between telling Amanda Grayson that they were chasing after a Romulan assassin who had a blueprint of their defense schematics—and telling her they’d be off-world for a few weeks. Months. Whatever. Scale no longer made sense. They were talking galactic; you couldn’t buy a map for that in a gas station on your way outta town.

‘Our first drop point is just past Alpha Centauri,’ Spock said. ‘It is the nearest intergalactic port to Earth, and may yield some intelligence regarding anyone who sought passage through our barriers. In order to divine the means of their escape, it may prove beneficial to understand the means of their arrival.’

‘Right,’ Jim said. He was doing his best to contribute instead of scramble to follow along. ‘We find the ship make or model, maybe we can trace their warp signature.’

Spock favored him with another dark look. ‘Precisely.’

‘I’m not too bad at this stuff, am I?’ Jim favored Spock with a grin he could predict Spock wouldn’t exactly find favorable. But it was his all the way, lopsided and blank, giving away nothing, keeping what little he had close to the chest. It occurred to him a split second after the expression settled on his face that he’d seen it before and not just in a mirror, or the polished silver siding of a taillight. It was one of the main attractions in the emotional baggage Spock Prime’d dumped inside of him: bright grins and cheeky smirks and tired, tight, diplomatic not-quite-smiles that never strayed from the polite into the murderous, with a tense, square jaw, all formal training on top of personal charm, to make sure the sentiment and its ideals never wavered. Jim’s grin was a combination of all of those in one, which mean it was muddied and less official, but it was still recognizable for who it belonged to—and, of course, the features that wore it. That was him—or could have been, if he hadn’t been a passenger in his own life. If he’d been the captain, instead of the guy fixing other people’s busted engines. ‘I mean, I could be worse.’

‘Those standards,’ Spock replied crisply, ‘are without logic at best and without merit, at worst.’

He stood to leave and Jim stared at the swoopy curve the small of his back made because his posture was so stiff, so perfectly straight, that it was impossible to picture him any way—or anywhere—else.

*


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vulcans love beanies.

Jim must’ve passed out somewhere between Klingon lessons to snatch some much-needed shut-eye that, like most things that were supposed to be good for him, ended up biting him right in the ass instead.

His dreams still had that quiet, hot insistence, a focus and a direction that his waking life lacked; they felt more real than the real stuff did, considering the wild adventure he’d been sucked into, and he fell into them a little too easily for comfort.

But they were warm and when they weren’t warm they were even warmer; Spock’s voice had a quality of age and wisdom that comforted and enveloped; Jim could’ve drowned in that tone, the little rumble in the base of the throat, or the sound of his own, surprised laughter fading into a few sweet, stupid, nearly-silent gasps.

It wasn’t like anything to see yourself the way somebody else saw you—more than a reflection, ten times more, a hundred, larger than truth, larger than life. Jim could see himself older, restlessly settled, from a few key, brief angles. He could see the shape of his shoulders and the width of his hips, one hand on his waist, the hair on his arms getting darker, even a few age-freckles in dimpled, shadowed spots. He weighed more, that was for sure, but from how he saw it, from whose memory it _really_ was, he couldn’t come around to minding it.

There was the desert, red mountains piercing an unconcerned sky, wind shifting the sand like it was water so that every grain glinted, reptilian, each of them glittering like scales.

And there was the stuff that really fucked Jim up: long, blank, echoing spaces that had no function, no anchor, no place in anyone’s time, a blackness that wasn’t even black, a color that had no color, silence without the cushion of sound. These little pockets—voids—were always at the corners of his vision and it was Jim’s own voice, Jim’s chuckle, Jim’s mouth forming the word _Spock,_ that brought him back from the edge, pulling him out into the sunlight every time he got lost.

 _Jim. I called you Jim_.

‘Jim,’ Spock said.

Jim’s eyes opened. Harsh strip lighting hit them and he winced, sucking in a breath before muttering a curse.

Every hangover he’d ever had was better than this.

‘You do not enjoy being interrupted from sleep before you are ready to awaken,’ Spock Prime said above him.

Jim grunted. That much was obvious. But whether that was a comment on something Spock had only just observed or something he’d known for years was less obvious.

‘Preferences aside, I would not have disturbed you without due cause. We will be docking at Alpha Centauri within the hour. Forty-nine minutes, barring unforeseen delays, to be precise.’

‘Ungh,’ Jim said.

Spock Prime’s eyebrow went up; Jim’s pulse quickened with it, due to the flush of realization letting him know he’d been expecting exactly that arch, exactly that shape, at exactly that moment. He scrubbed his aching eyes until they stung and Spock Prime was no longer visible beyond the white sunbursts in Jim’s field of vision.

Gradually, the sunbursts cleared. Spock Prime’s eyebrow was still up and Jim still wasn’t. He stretched and his back popped as he straightened, unfolding himself from the computer terminal chair.

‘Fascinating,’ Spock Prime said.

‘Uh-uh,’ Jim replied. ‘You don’t get to do that. Get all _fascinating_ on a guy who’s just trying to get some damn sleep.’

‘My comment was not in reference to your unconscious state.’

Jim’s elbow was tingly, feeling gradually returning—he’d slept on it wrong and it’d be a while before it felt like a part of him again. ‘Yeah? Then what _was_ it in reference to?’

‘The remarkable propensity of the youthful to ‘bounce back’, as the saying goes.’ Spock Prime allowed Jim to yawn before he continued, ‘It is a gift—which, like most such blessings, is not appreciated until after it is long gone.’

‘ _Ungh_ ,’ Jim said again, more pointed this time. ‘Can you spare me the metaphysical life lesson stuff until at least an hour after I get up?’ Jim paused, shielding his eyes from the light with his bent elbow. ‘This some kind of mission brief session or something? I didn’t think you guys _did_ informal.’

‘Is it not prudent to be certain all members of a landing party are informed of the roles they must play and the duties they shall be expected to perform?’

Jim caught sight of the darkness in Spock Prime’s eyes and his breath caught between his ribs and his lungs, in a place out of time—and probably out of his mind.

‘What the hell did you do to me?’ he asked before he realized how savage, how frightened, his sleep-raw voice was gonna sound.

‘In truth, I had not anticipated the effects would continue as they have.’ If Vulcans could look concerned—or anything other than mildly disapproving—Jim had to figure that Spock Prime was showing it now. He flinched under that more than he did under Spock’s merciless scrutiny, the younger version of the same guy scowling storm-clouds at him instead of watching, observing, maybe even understanding, a little too much. ‘It will require further monitoring.’

‘ _Further monitoring?_ You _screwed up my brain_ ,’ Jim said, but then, because it sounded harsher than he’d wanted, he tried to chuckle it off. ‘Though, fine, depending on who you ask, that thing was pretty screwed up long before you came along.’

Spock Prime watched him carefully and Jim didn’t care much for that either. He did his best work flying under the radar, avoiding Frank’s watchful eye for so long that it was easy to do the same with everyone else after that. He had a short shelf life when it came to other people’s continued interest, but he’d learned to prolong his expiration date by surprising people, blowing away their expectations.

That act didn’t work if someone was watching him from the start, paying attention to how he woke up in the morning and how he drove cross-country and how he squared his shoulders and let Starfleet security pat him down over the course of every checkpoint between the civilian entrance to Headquarters and Pike’s office.

Jim didn’t know what kinda picture Spock Prime had put together about him—just that he’d learned enough to get it dangerously close to accurate.

‘Perhaps I did not take into account the weight of our shared history—that which was established between myself and the Jim Kirk from my timeline,’ Spock Prime said. ‘To offer someone the details of another life, one that might at some divergent point have been their own—this is not something I have ever before attempted.’

‘Oh. Good.’ Jim rubbed his palms against his thighs, trying to make his body wake up and join the rest of him. ‘So this was, what—a fun experiment for you? And here I was thinking to myself that at least _one_ of us knew what he was doing.’

‘To my knowledge, our circumstances as they are proceeding have never been replicated,’ Spock Prime said. ‘I could not claim expertise in a field to which I have only quite recently been exposed.’

Jim’s jaw cracked when he yawned and he pressed his fingers to the unseen hinge beneath his skin, rubbing rough-shod over a few days’ worth of unattended stubble. He was gonna have to do something about that unless he wanted to be hunting Romulan assassins with a beard.

‘Guess you never expected to run into another Jim Kirk,’ he said.

It was a peace offering, in its own way.

‘No.’ Spock’s tone turned low, thoughtful, like the crunch of gravel under four heavy tires. ‘You are not the first alternate of my captain that I have encountered. But you _are_ the first with whom I have shared my mind. There is the possibility that the choice to expedite our common understanding was a miscalculation on my part.’

It seemed like more than a possibility from where Jim was sitting, but then he was still stuck on the part where he wasn’t the first—not even the first otherJim out there. That stung, kinda. Got him right between the shoulders like someone was fighting dirty and they’d hit him from behind.

‘Couldn’t be.’ Jim reached up to slap Spock Prime’s shoulder but retracted his hand and the thought just in time. Vulcans didn’t go in for recreational touching. And, knowing that, Jim might as well have saved the intrusion for the Spock who already didn’t go in much for Jim, the one he didn’t have any shared history or common understanding with. ‘Vulcans don’t miscalculate.’

Jim shook out his elbow and stood, massaging the pins and needles out of the stiff joint. If the old man was right—and he’d never been anything but as far as Jim could tell—then they still had a good forty-five minutes or so before they landed. He had to get moving, wriggle out of this particular conversation before he fell any further down the wormhole.

But more importantly than that, he needed a shower.

Scotty and Uhura’s ship wasn’t a big, fancy passenger-class vehicle, but it had facilities. There were no private bathrooms attached to any of the sleeping quarters—not that Jim had bothered to take advantage of those yet—but there were separate men and women’s showers, one at the end of the hall and one at the beginning, each with one stall and a locking door, their own separate room with a sink and toilet.

It looked like heaven to Jim who’d slept in every place _but_ a bed the past few days and only changed his clothes because the first outfit got ripped off of him. Ideally he could’ve done laundry at the same time, but he wasn’t about to shrink one of Spock’s shirts just because he couldn’t read the Vulcan directions inside the collar.

He tossed it on the floor on top of the crumpled heap of his jeans and his briefs and his socks, then sighed and picked it up again, slinging it over the towel bar instead. It wasn’t for Spock’s sake but for Spock’s mom, who was gonna get the shirt back one way or another, still in one piece, just the way she’d leant it out.

Then, feet pressed against the chilly tiles, feeling cold for the first time since he’d dragged Spock Prime out of the fire, Jim stepped into the shower unit, motion sensors signaling the temperature-controlled spray to start.

Of course, there was water in his eyes and ears the second he moved directly under the shower-head. There were some people in life who couldn’t wash their hair, no matter how careful they were, without coming out half-blind from shampoo and that was Jim Kirk all over. He’d stopped trying to be careful because there was no point to it, letting the soap run down foamy between his shoulder blades while the water warmed his skin from the outside. The center of his chest was pink from the heat but no matter how hard he scrubbed he still couldn’t wash the feeling of the trip off him, the cool, enveloping silence of space—or clean the dreams out from between his ears, thudding in time to the rhythm of his heart and the water hitting the tiles.

‘Cold water,’ Jim said hoarsely. His voice echoed back to him, distorted. It sounded older, but not any wiser. It wasn’t the voice from his dreams—Spock Prime’s dreams, to be more precise, since they’d never been his dreams. They were just the ones he was having. A miscalculation, but not quite. ‘C’mon, colder. _Ice cold_. Where the hell’s the damn—’

Jim found the manual override a second later and lowered the temperature by about thirty degrees before the spray was slicing icy beats into his flesh. He wasn’t too-warm anymore; he couldn’t picture a scorched desert or feel the prickle of sand against his skin, or hear the heavy, raking breaths of a man who was fighting for his life but also fighting for something more important than his life—or the answering fire in his belly at the shapes, the red shadows, cast over a roaring fire—

Jim blinked. Water beaded on his eyelashes, his vision blurry. He swallowed and realized he was hard and pounded the wall of the shower stall a couple times until nature took over, his numb hand and the freezing water settling one of his current problems, at least.

It wasn’t like he could go over these particular side effects with a Vulcan old enough to be his grandpa, although the way the emotions he’d transferred were shaping up, it wasn’t gonna be easy for Jim to look Spock Prime in the eye without thinking about all that warmth. Not just the physical stuff, but a sense of wholeness, of oneness, of completion.

It wasn’t something Jim’d ever known under his own steam or in his own time.

Never had been lucky enough.

With the flat of his palm, he shut off the water and stepped out of the stall. He dried off mercilessly until he was pink and stinging, then got dressed in the same old clothes that were carrying around the same old smells.

He saw himself in the mirror over the sink on his way out. His lips were the faintest shade of slowly warming blue and his hair was a wet mess.

‘Well,’ Scotty said when Jim joined the others on the bridge. ‘ _You_ look like yesterday’s breakfast barely warmed over, don’t ye? Have ye not got your space-legs yet? I tell ye, if you’ve puked _anywhere_ on _my_ ship, I swear—’

‘’M fine, Scotty. Fine. Never been better. Pretty sure whatever I’ve got isn’t contagious. That was a joke,’ Jim added, for the sake of the Vulcans present, and also so Uhura wouldn’t decide to take him out in defense of her territory, or simply because she was looking to rid the galaxy of stale humor everywhere.

‘Aye, but it wasn’t a very _good_ one,’ Scotty replied, ‘if ye had t’mention it. All right, laddie, now sit yourself back, relax, and enjoy th’rare, honorable sight of a _true_ master at the peak of his craft.’

‘He means he probably won’t destroy anything in the docking bay this time.’ Uhura’s grin went crooked. ‘That was a joke, too. Mine was actually funny, though, so you might not’ve recognized it.’

Jim folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall as they glided into port. Scotty was full of himself but he appeared to have his reasons for a puffed-up ego; there was barely a jolt or a bump or a single internal indication that they’d come to a full rest when the ship lights powered down to half and Scotty stretched his arms over his head, cracking his knuckles with a sigh of pure satisfaction.

‘Jeez, Scotty,’ Jim said. ‘Not in front of the Vulcans.’

‘There’s hope for your comedic timing yet, blue eyes,’ Uhura told him, clapping him on the chest and leaving him winded. ‘Right, then—we’ll rendezvous back at the hangar in seven hours,’ she continued, slipping a handful of what had to be illegal firearms into hidden caches in her boots and belts, ‘which would be oh six hundred, local time. But I’m telling you this—if you’re late, we’ll be long gone. Bring trouble back with you, we’ll be long gone. Draw unwanted attention, we’ll be long gone. Do anything that makes you a liability—even more than you already are—and...well, I think even you get the idea. Right, Kirk?’

‘No honor among smugglers, huh?’ Jim asked.

‘Survival of the fittest,’ Uhura replied.

‘You know, everybody says that, but they never use it _exactly_ the right way.’ Jim moved after her in order to distract himself from the otherwise too-distracting presence of both Spocks behind him. Their shadows loomed in his periphery. One of them had felt things so damn deep for him that Jim was amazed both of them hadn’t been torn apart by the force of all those feelings—those simple feelings. He tugged at the collar of his shirt to let air underneath, lights flashing on and off to illuminate their way down the narrow hall. He had to keep talking. It didn’t matter what he said; it was even better if it kept him from thinking. ‘It’s a little more complex than—’

‘Is this your idea of small-talk?’ Uhura asked.

‘The sound of my own voice saying dumb shit happens to soothe me,’ Jim said. ‘You wouldn’t deny a lunatic his final comforts before getting his ass fried on a hunch, would you?’

‘Only if it was _really_ boring.’ Uhura turned before they debarked. ‘I’ll be taking care of supplies. You idiots do your thing. No matter what happens, no matter how interesting it is, I _don’t_ want the details after. Oh, don’t look so sad, boys. It’s not that I’m not curious. But something tells me it’s a good insurance policy not to follow along _too_ closely when it comes to idealistic strangers.’

‘Who’re you calling idealistic?’ Jim asked.

Uhura flicked a slim finger in his direction, then swished and headed down the ramp.

‘Damn,’ Jim said. ‘She’s— _damn_.’

‘It is not surprising that someone of your contrary disposition and behavioral choices would take interest in an individual as unimpressed by you as she is unavailable to you,’ Spock said.

Jim’s skin did a weird, inch-worm kind of crawl down the length of his spine. ‘Oh my God. Did you just psychoanalyze me? Did you just take the time out of this mission to tell me what my _type_ is, that I go for anyone out of my league?’

‘I made an observation,’ Spock replied. ‘One which was more relevant to our mission than you understand. Should you prove distracted by external stimuli so easily, it would be better for said mission to have you remain behind where your lack of training will not prove detrimental.’

‘It is always possible,’ Spock Prime said quietly, ‘that lack of training, in this instance, may in fact prove beneficial.’

‘I do not need to remind you that this assessment is highly illogical.’

‘Nevertheless,’ Spock Prime said, ‘its illogic has no bearing on its accuracy.’

‘No,’ Spock agreed. ‘I suppose it does not.’

Jim tried not to feel like he was the ball being smacked back and forth over some unseen net. For one, he was pretty sure Vulcans didn’t go in for tennis. But more importantly, he didn’t need to feel like Spock Prime was standing up for him based on the experiences he’d had, the loyalties he’d formed, with another Jim Kirk in another universe.

He wasn’t that guy—and he wasn’t looking to wait until he screwed up royally in order to drive that home. Better to let the old guy down easy instead of a steep drop he might be too long in the tooth to handle.

‘Come on.’ Jim waved them ahead like he hadn’t been paying attention. The trick to operating with Vulcans, he was starting to learn, was not to let on how easily they were getting to you. If they thought Jim was more like one of them, with fewer fragile human emotions and squishy parts, then maybe they’d stop talking about him like he wasn’t even in the room. ‘Pike stuck me with you guys for a reason and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t to hang around keeping the ship warm.’

‘A sentiment with which I am inclined to agree,’ Spock Prime said.

Jim wriggled his shoulders but, as it turned out, he couldn’t shake off the sensation of being backed up. So he struck out, moving forward, trying to leave it behind him instead.  

Daedalus Station was a waypoint for most intergalactic travelers heading in Earth’s direction. It was outside the Alpha Centauri system, far away enough from Earth’s regular patrols to afford a bit of privacy if the dealings weren’t above-board. Jim had heard stories, most of them not the kind of thing that hit any official textbooks; they were the rumors and gossip that came out after ex-Starfleet captains and freelancers had had one too many drinks in the Riverside bars.

Smuggling, forgeries, trafficking; all happening in the hidden pockets below the docking bays, underneath the Starfleet lounges and accommodations for the crew who worked the station.

It was pretty much the definition of _seedy underbelly_.

Every so often, Earth police forces would show up to wipe the place clean, raiding the clubs and making arrests, turning the bars upside down and shaking them to see what loose change fell out. But they didn’t have the funds or the inclination to make more than quarterly sweeps. The Narada was the real threat and everybody knew it. What they didn’t know was where the Narada was or where it’d turn up next.

Jim had heard it all from an ex-security chief who was unlucky enough to have family in Riverside. She’d retired there and after a few vodka waters with lime, she opened up to pretty much anyone and everyone about the state of crime in their surrounding star systems. Federation resources were worn down with maintaining a state of constant defense against the big stuff—and that meant small stuff slipped right through the cracks.

There was no telling from the Starfleet officers who checked in Jim and the Spocks whether Nero had been doing work out of Daedalus. They were bored, diligent but probably hoping to be reassigned for their next commission. If they’d caught even a whiff of Romulan activity, they’d have been tripping all over each other in an effort to be the first to turn up a lead as a sweet shot at promotion.

Jim figured if they were gonna get anywhere, they had to go underground—see if the atmosphere was tense down below, like something big had come through and everybody was still watching their backs in case it decided to make a return trip.

He studied the lift that would take them down through the station as Spock Prime stood in the shadow of a topiary garden. Spock was watching over Jim’s shoulder like a hawk.

‘It seems practical to suggest that Captain Pike chose you not for any exemplary demonstration of ability but rather because he judged you to be capable of tracking criminal behavior, due perhaps to your familiarity with illegal activities,’ Spock said.

‘That, and I can pick out the best bar in the joint just by reading the name,’ Jim replied.

‘There are many classifications of talent,’ Spock Prime agreed.

Spock lifted a brow. Jim told a flush of gratitude to stuff it.

‘Plus, I’m smart enough to tell you two to put some hats on or _something_ ,’ Jim added, rolling his shoulders through the natural life-cycle of a tense shrug. ‘You think Vulcans are illogical enough to scatter for private jobs when there are so few of them left? Uh-uh. No way. They wouldn’t be on a station like this. Not exactly your style—present company excluded. You two being...special, I guess.’

‘Ah.’ Spock Prime graced Jim with another familiar expression that Jim had to turn away from before he got caught by its gravity like a shuttle in a tractor beam. ‘This is not an unfamiliar course of action.’

‘Well, whatever it is...’ Jim waved a hand in his direction, fixing his gaze on one of the more twisted bushes. ‘Just cover up the ears and the eyebrows if you can and we’ll get started. Good thing you can work the tall, dark and crazy-or-mysterious angle; I don’t even have to ask you to crack a smile. Wouldn’t want any part of your face to break from the strain.’

‘As miracles are currently in short supply and equally high demand,’ Spock Prime said, ‘these are sound and not unmanageable instructions.’

Jim heard the rustling behind him and allowed himself a moment of wonder. He hadn’t actually thought the old guy would have hats on hand. But when he turned back around, Spock Prime had a sash tied around his forehead, which took care of the eyebrows and the ears exactly like Jim’d suggested. Like the suggestion was the right one. Like maybe it’d come from deep down, or another life, where that maneuver was old hat.

Literally.

Jim searched his memories and then the memories that weren’t his for a hint as to whether or not this bright idea was original or an echo of something else. But, as with most things, he came up short—although something told him the next time he had the chance to close his eyes and catch some z’s, he’d know the answer to the question he couldn’t bring himself to ask.

‘I believe this will serve you in the same fashion,’ Spock Prime added, holding out what looked like nothing more unusual than a simple, wool beanie—except there was plenty unusual about it, like who had it stuffed in his robes, and who was about to put it on. Circumstantial weirdness. Jim fought a grin; Spock’s face didn’t change, nor did he flinch. ‘It is, as Jim suggested, the most logical solution to a host of potential difficulties. To prevent them from arising will be more efficient than to combat their effects, should we allow them to come to pass.’

Spock nodded and accepted the offer. Jim watched—how the hell could he have looked away now?—as Spock pulled the hat down over his ears and, just as Jim was about to laugh, it hit him between the ribs.

He knew the expression Spock was wearing like a welcome handshake. He had to fight to remind himself that it wasn’t his welcome, that none of it was his at all.

‘From your silence and your countenance, it would appear that the disguise does not prove satisfactory,’ Spock said.

Jim cleared his throat. Somehow, he didn’t cough up his heart and a lung or choke on his tongue. ‘It’s fine, Spock. Vulcans oughta wear hats more often. Let’s move before somebody pegs us for _tourists_.’

Spock didn’t ask after the motivation for pronouncing that word like an insult, though Jim could almost tell he would’ve wanted to, if wanting was a light undertaking where Vulcans were concerned.

It was a good thing it wasn’t. One of the only strokes of luck Jim’d ever stumbled upon that wasn’t the bad kind.  

*


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I accidentally a Gaila.

Leaving the bright lights and the relatively open air behind, Jim let his good instincts for rough neighborhoods guide him, turning a few dark corners behind dark buildings, past the main drag leading out of the docking bays and into the spots where the real action happened. Behind the scenes, without neon signs to light the way.

Or so Jim figured. If some things were true whether you were on Earth or a distant planetoid or a space-station, then dive bars were dive bars anywhere and everywhere you went in the galaxy.

They hadn’t gone more than a half mile by the time Jim picked a place—called Farpoint—based on the music that was pouring out of the sub-level door every time it opened. Illogical, which was exactly why he had to be the one to settle on it. The other two, seeing as they were mostly the same person, would never have acted on pure impulse.

‘Just follow my lead,’ Jim said, the sound of his own voice steadying him. ‘And try not to look too...you know. _The V-word_.’

‘There are a multitude of possible references beginning with the letter V,’ Spock replied crisply. ‘I do not wish to assume the most obvious and mistake your meaning.’

Jim rolled his eyes. ‘Nervous, huh?’

‘My question was valid.’

‘Sure, but you didn’t answer mine. Classic avoidance technique.’

‘Time,’ Spock Prime suggested, ‘would be better spent less liberally.’

He walked past Jim and into Farpoint. Jim shrugged. ‘You heard the old man. Probably best to listen to your elders. That _is_ a Vulcan thing, right?’

Spock stiffened. It wasn’t much to go on, but Jim was paying enough attention that he noticed it. ‘Vulcans logically respect anyone who has experienced and learned more than themselves.’

‘See,’ Jim replied, holding the door open for him with his elbow, ‘and here I thought we’d _never_ find something the two of us had in common.’

Spock moved past him, still stiff. He smelled way too clean for a place like Farpoint was shaping up to be, leather jackets and sweat and smoke pouring out of the joint in waves, but it took all kinds. If people underestimated them because they didn’t look like the usual type, it might work to their advantage.

There were plenty of ways to mistrust people. Some of those ways ended up being better in the long run. They just had to play it stupid—and Jim had been known to pull off that act like a pro in his time.

He chanced a look at Spock as a Ferengi—had to be, due to the massive forehead—slammed past them with a pool cue, cursing up a storm in Standard. Not surprisingly, Spock’s nostrils were flared, like he read all the noise as a smell he really didn’t like.

‘Ease up,’ Jim said, bumping his shoulder to get his attention. ‘You’re gonna start a fight with that face of yours.’

It sounded like something someone’s grandmother would say, but Jim had his reasons. He knew what he was talking about; Farpoint was his kind of place. In there, locking eyes with the wrong person could mean the end of stealth operations. Locking eyes while making a face like everything in Farpoint offended every single one of your Vulcan sensibilities was downright offensive.

Jim would’ve been offended if he’d met Spock in a place like this and not the halls of Starfleet, where a certain amount of pompous condescension was to be expected. He would’ve wondered what the hell Beanie Guy’s problem was—and, in the right mood, after the right number of drinks, he might’ve made it his business to find out.

‘I do not see how an expression of neutrality can be considered incitement,’ Spock said. That almost seemed like the end of it, but then he continued, walking beside Jim without so much looking at him. His problem, Jim decided was that he needed to have some pockets to put his hands in, or anything that’d distract his posture from being so unnaturally stiff. ‘However, I will accept that darkened locations packed with characters of ill repute are your area of expertise. They are certainly not mine.’

‘Yeah, and it shows,’ Jim replied.

Spock had walked right into that insult whether he viewed it as a compliment or not.

Jim realized they’d lost Spock Prime around the same time he stopped glancing sidelong toward Spock, checking where the brim of his cap rolled down over his ears, making sure he’d be fooled if they were seeing each other for the first time. Ears were hardly the first thing anyone noticed about a person, but in these times, at _this_ particular space station, where they were looking for recent Romulan activity, there was no telling what someone might pick up on. It was better to be safe than it’d be explaining themselves from the wrong end of a phaser.

Jim figured the old man had it under control, that he’d come prepared. Spock Prime had the years on him to know what he was doing—which was exactly how Jim had lost him. He scanned the bar, noting the Orion girl at the far end, the Ferengi who’d bumped Spock meeting up with a group of his friends, and three Andorians sharing ice-blue cocktails the same color as their skin while they kept an eye on everyone who passed by.

There was no sign of an old man in gray robes; it was like he’d pulled a disappearing hat trick, vanished into another he’d kept up his sleeve, and disappeared.

He’d be back. That was what Jim told himself, but there was a certain, real conviction behind it, more than the words he fed himself to stave off panic. He knew Spock Prime would be back because, as another unfortunate side effect from the mind meld, Jim _knew_ him. Better than he should’ve.

And the guy wasn’t the type to run out on his crew.

Jim coughed, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets, just to have something to do other than thinking about the mess of people he’d ended up with as some kind of team.

‘I’m gonna go talk to the redhead,’ he said.

Spock’s eyebrow disappeared above and beyond the brim of his black beanie. Whatever he’d anticipated from Jim’s information-gathering skills, it clearly hadn’t included anyone from Orion with a mess of red curls and legs that went on forever. That was a statistical anomaly; Jim probably needed to monitor the situation just in case it had to be reported to Starfleet.

But it was more than that. Since Jim had picked her out of the crowd, he hadn’t seen anyone come close or try to chat her up or otherwise. She was sitting with her back to the wall in a corner that was perfectly equidistant between the rear and front exits. And those three Andorians with their eyes on the crowd were ranged a couple seats down, not looking at her but keeping an eye on her personal space all the same.

Private security maybe.

Just not the kind that wore a uniform.

She knew stuff. The legs had drawn Jim’s attention but all the surrounding evidence had managed to hold it. He’d seen plenty of redheads but none of them sat the way she did, like she was the center of her own network, rather than the center of her own universe.

Jim rolled his shoulders into a more casual posture and smoothed back his hair, grateful he’d taken the time on Scotty and Uhura’s ship to shower and shave. He could’ve made the space bum angle work if he’d needed to, but starting out on clean footing was a point in his favor. The sweater with the cowl neck didn’t work with his leather jacket the same way a simple white t-shirt did; Jim told himself it was a challenge and that he could rise to the occasion. He could make it work.

‘How do I look?’ he asked Spock, realizing immediately he wouldn’t get any morale-boosting speech in return.

‘You appear exactly as you did moments ago,’ Spock replied. ‘Nothing about you has changed significantly in the past few seconds. That is a singularly peculiar question to ask.’

‘You _could’ve_ told me I looked good,’ Jim said. ‘Been a team player. Pumped me up. But I’ll pretend you did and we’ll call it even anyway. Watch and learn, Spock.’

Jim dove through the crowd with the expertise of all the practice he’d gained over the years—more than was strictly legal. He’d snuck into plenty of bars with fake IDs he’d put together himself—only to discover that the act of making the fakes look perfect was generally more fun than what he could do once he had them—and a beer in his hot hands. Not that the latter didn’t have its finer points, ‘cause it did, but most of those didn’t test him the same way.

When he arrived at the Orion’s table, she’d uncrossed her legs and was leaning forward on one elbow, waiting for him. The way she arched her eyebrow was so much friendlier than the Vulcan version of the same expression that Jim’s easy grin came naturally.

‘You’re not subtle, are you?’ the Orion asked. ‘But you _are_ sweet to look at. I suppose you think that’ll take you far enough that the rest doesn’t matter?’

‘Well, I was _gonna_ offer to buy you a drink, let you get to know me,’ Jim replied, ‘but it seems like you’ve already got me mapped out. Except for a few constellations I’m hiding in places you can’t see; now it’s basically my duty to tell you about those. Wouldn’t want you to think I’m hiding the best parts or anything.’

The Orion grinned. ‘You’re cute. Like one of those golden Earth canines, you know? Had one as a pet once; you remind me of him. Big, dumb, sweet, self-serving... Now and then, he _could_ pull a trick worthy of a treat. Take a seat, kid.’

 _Kid_ , Jim mouthed, but he’d take it. He’d also take the seat. He slid in next to her, aware of the Andorian guard she had with her, knowing they’d be on him like flies on summer road kill if he made a single wrong move. That was inspiration enough—but Spock was another element of the situation. Spock was watching, and that meant Jim had plenty to prove. That he belonged here, for one. That he might’ve been a hick without training, but he wasn’t useless. And he didn’t think this was exactly the sort of thing _Captain_ James T. Kirk would’ve tried, either.

It was him. It was his.

He leaned his chin on the palm of his hand, turning to the Orion slow.

‘You have a name, or should I make one up?’ he asked.

‘Call me Gaila, baby blue,’ she said. ‘How about I buy you the drink, since you don’t look like you could afford my tastes, and that way, everybody’s happy?’

Man, Jim thought. If only he could’ve been on a mission with _her_ —he’d even take the Andorian guard in exchange for banter that made sense, for the flirty twist of her red lips and the warmth in her eyes. Not that he’d been lulled into a false sense of security by her long lashes and her wicked smile; he could see the edge beneath the warmth and he knew she was sizing him up from all angles, coming to the very conclusion he’d hoped she would all along: that he was too much of a nobody to be a threat to anybody.

Maybe she was right.

Anyway, all he needed was a little information.

‘Call me Jim, Gaila,’ he replied. ‘So, aren’t you wondering what a nice farmboy like me’s doing in a place like this?’

‘You know, I _don’t_ wonder,’ Gaila said. ‘Especially not when it comes to farmboys. Because everybody’s here for the same reason.’

Jim let his grin widen. ‘Oh yeah? Wanna enlighten me?’

‘Whatever you want,’ Gaila replied, ‘I bet it _isn’t_ something _nice_.’

‘Nice,’ Jim repeated. ‘ _Nnnice_. Damn, Gaila—I like the way you say that word.’

‘You’re not so bad at it, yourself.’

‘S’an honor, coming from you.’ Jim eyed the drink Gaila must’ve called over for him as it was set down on the table, running a callused finger over the rim of the twisted glass, tracing cool condensation down the side of the cup and spiraling along the swirl of the stem. ‘You’re right, though. I _do_ want something. You’ve got me. You’ve figured me out.’

‘Not that it was hard,’ Gaila replied. ‘Plus, you came in with such a _boring_ looking thing—all green and sour.’

‘Not your kinda green, either.’ Jim gestured. ‘Vibrant. Alive. _Green_.’

‘Are you looking to trade up?’

‘If only I could.’ Jim flashed her another grin. ‘I’m just—what was it you said? Looking for something, wanting something that isn’t so nice. Wondering if anything particularly nasty’s come through lately.’

‘Doesn’t it always?’ Gaila pursed her lips. ‘It’s sweet that you think something like that’s worth noticing anymore.’

‘Well, the stuff that _is_ worth noticing, I mean.’ Jim kept his posture low, walking his fingers toward her across the table—until she clapped her hand over his, a grip ten times stronger than it looked. The Andorians didn’t even flinch or show signs of rising. Jim realized then that they were for show. Gaila had herself under control and probably didn’t need them beyond the attention they drew.

‘You looking to get yourself killed, farmboy?’ Gaila asked. ‘If it’s the stuff worth noticing, you can bet your skin that it’ll notice you back.’

‘I’m nobody,’ Jim said. ‘Who’d notice me?’

Gaila chuckled and leaned back, withdrawing her hand. Jim reached for the drink and downed it in one go. That’d been a close call—but he was closer now for having made it through.

‘All right,’ Gaila said at last. ‘I’m interested. Roll the dice—that’s what you’re asking me to do. And I don’t see why I _shouldn’t_ play, especially when the stakes are so high. You really _are_ asking after the same thing everyone’s in such a fuss over. Romulans.’ She sighed. ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same. Old Earth proverb. Your kind certainly has a way with words.’

‘It’s more general than that,’ Jim replied. If he let her know now how interested he really was, he could blow his chances for good. ‘A way with our tongues, really.’

Gaila hooked her forefinger in his direction. ‘Come a little closer, Jim.’

Jim leaned in. Gaila pressed her lips to the shell of his ear. It took him a moment to realize she was whispering an address.

Something about the coordinates sat funny in his stomach, like all the meals he’d eaten since leaving Riverside—or, more accurately, all the ones he’d skipped. But Jim didn’t let the queasy feeling show on his face, not in the final round. He grinned instead, the grin he already knew Gaila didn’t mind, his tongue poking at the corner of his mouth like he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. That wasn’t such a tough act, considering he didn’t make a habit of swallowing everything a mysterious stranger told him in a bar. Especially when that stranger had green skin.

Well, there was a first time for everything.

‘You’re kidding.’ Jim scanned the crowd for Spock. He spotted Junior but not Senior.

‘Seldom if ever, Jim.’ Gaila flashed him a grin of her own, with too many white, sharp teeth against the green. ‘It’s not my style. I’m a busy woman.’

‘I’m sure you are,’ Jim said.

How he extracted himself from the conversation was gonna be just as important as how he’d infiltrated it. If he left too soon he’d seem overly eager, a little too interested in the information. Linger too long, and she’d start to think he was hanging around for something else.

Jim wasn’t entirely against that option. He’d had a long day, one of a series that were only getting longer, and they didn’t seem about to end anytime soon. Spending time with Gaila would’ve been a welcome relief from the reality of his life for a spell—but it was also gonna make it that much harder for him to get back to his life after the spell was over.

And who knew what the Spocks would get up to in the meantime, if Jim wasn’t there to look out for them?

‘You know how it is.’ Gaila gestured to the bartender, ordering herself another drink. ‘Places to be, people to see. Frequencies to monitor.’

‘I’m not sure that’s how that one goes,’ Jim said.

‘Maybe not on Earth.’ Gaila put her hand on his arm and leaned in close. Jim didn’t realize she was wearing lipstick until he felt it on his cheek, a kiss that came away tacky. He could just imagine the imprint she’d left. And he couldn’t exactly rub it off on Spock’s borrowed shirt even if he wanted to.

That’d be bad manners.

‘You take care of yourself out there, Jim.’ Gaila leaned away, taking a sip from her fresh drink. ‘It’s a big galaxy, but I so rarely meet interesting people in it. I’d hate to think one of them might get himself killed with my fingerprints all over the tragedy.’

‘Don’t worry about me.’ Jim could take that as his cue to slide off the barstool, nodding toward the Andorian guards. As soon as they clued in to the lipstick on his cheek, they turned away, and Jim realized maybe Gaila had done him a favor. Now he wasn’t gonna get any interested parties looking for a replay of what they’d discussed. ‘Self-preservation’s kinda my thing.’

‘You keep telling yourself that,’ Gaila said. ‘Maybe, one day, it’ll come true.’

She winked; then, Jim had to peel himself away, filtering back through the crowd so he wouldn’t do anything stupid, like get caught in a cozy debate about his personality flaws with an Orion who made dangerous information her business. Chances were, he’d lose.

Jim wasn’t much for no-win scenarios.

He wasn’t more than six feet away from Gaila’s table when Spock materialized at his side like fog off the San Francisco bay. He was in a different spot from where Jim had last eyeballed him; obviously they’d been headed for each other.

‘I trust that your conversation was more productive than it appeared from a distance,’ Spock said.

‘Productive, huh? I got us a little thing called a _heading_ , if that’s what you mean,’ Jim replied.

He couldn’t do anything about the stupid, self-serving grin that spread over his face as he said it, just like he couldn’t do anything about how good it felt to do something right in the face of Spock’s disapproval. _Again._

Spock blinked, tilting his head like he couldn’t look at Jim head on because he didn’t make sense that way.

‘Any sign of your other half?’ Jim asked.

Spock’s brow wrinkled at the center, forming a seam in his forehead. ‘That is a term which inaccurately implies that we are not complete versions of ourselves—that only together do we form a whole. That is unequivocally false.’

‘Well, you come up with something better for me to call him then,’ Jim said. He caught sight of a flicker of gray in the crowd. ‘I’m not gonna ask _you_ if you’ve seen Spock around.’

‘It would be considerably more direct,’ Spock replied.

‘It’d _also_ make me feel like I’m going crazy. Which, maybe I am, but that’s the thing about humans. We lie to ourselves _all_ the time to make ourselves feel better about the big stuff.’

Spock’s nostrils flared again. ‘I will not speak to this flaw in humanity. Instead I will suggest that a more appropriate metaphor, if one must be used at all, would be ‘mirror image’.’

‘That’s one unforgiving mirror,’ Jim replied. He rocked forward onto the balls of his feet and saw, right over Spock’s shoulder, the mirror image in question approaching them from a back room, still wearing the ridiculous sash around his head like it was something he did every day. If Jim could’ve lifted one eyebrow, it would’ve been perfect for the moment. Another opportunity missed; it was far from the first and there was no way it’d be the last. ‘Speak of the devil—here he comes now. Ears burning, old man?’

‘If that was a reference to the shape of Vulcan ears and commentary on our resemblance to unsavory figures in Earth mythology—’ Spock began.

‘In this instance,’ Spock Prime cut in, ‘I have every reason to believe it was nothing more harmful than a general human colloquialism.’

Jim cleared his throat. ‘Yeah. Yeah, nothing more harmful. Look, are we getting outta here, or what? ‘Cause you can’t keep dangling a place like this in front of me,’ he added, ‘when we’ve got a deadline to meet. Also, sooner or later, one of you is gonna draw the wrong kind of attention.’

‘An astute observation.’ Spock Prime started toward the door. ‘We shall have to find a place where we may speak of our findings more freely.’

They were out in the cool, thin air in a matter of seconds, distant footsteps the only rhythm echoing through the silence, the rumble of motors down other streets, not theirs; like most bad music, you only realized what a relief it was not to have the bass-line echoing through your skull after you’d shut out the incessant noise, or how welcome fresh air was to starved lungs.

Jim pursed his lips and wheeled them into an empty alleyway behind Farpoint, settling in between two dumpsters overflowing with trash, which nobody else would be stupid enough to get near.

In other words, it was the perfect spot for some much-needed privacy.

‘So,’ Jim said. ‘I think I might’ve got something useful in there. Just a hunch. Coordinates, from a reliable source.’

‘An Orion of likely ill-repute,’ Spock corrected.

‘Yeah,’ Jim said. ‘But she _liked_ me.’  

‘Indeed,’ Spock Prime agreed, ‘that information may prove invaluable. If your coordinates corroborate mine, then it would seem that to find the individual we currently seek, we must pursue him now through the neutral zone.’

Jim didn’t have the Vulcan poker face going for him and he wouldn’t have wished those pointy ears—not to mention the whole eyebrow situation—on his least favorite puffed-up cadet who was always bragging in one of Riverside’s bars after midnight, but he could’ve used that blank expression to keep him from turning toward the garbage bin like it was suddenly a five-star view in order to hide his thoughts.

Knowing Spock—knowing the Spocks—they could probably read his mind through the back of his skull anyway.

But it was like he’d told Spock before: humans lied to themselves all the time for the instant gratification, the short-term relief, at the expense of the long run. And Jim had always known he was all too human.

‘Huh.’ Jim sucked the breath back in after he’d sighed it out. His voice was steady. That was unexpected. ‘No wonder those coordinates I got gave me the willies.’

‘‘The willies’,’ Spock repeated.

Jim faced him; he was ready for that now. His recovery time was getting quicker. He’d always been fast on the uptake, as swift to learn as he was to fall. ‘Out of everything you _could’ve_ picked up on, you go with the willies?’

‘It is unnecessary to point out the lack of wisdom in traveling through the neutral zone. Both of you must already be aware of the risk inherent in that undertaking. For the sake of Starfleet and the entire Federation, we cannot afford to exacerbate tensions with the Klingons, who already blame humans and Vulcans for the assault on their resources by Nero and the Narada.’

‘Neither can we afford to relinquish our advantage,’ Spock Prime replied. ‘Nor can we afford to fail in our current mission.’

‘You think Uhura and Scotty are gonna go for that?’ Jim asked. ‘I don’t think they signed up for _traveling through the neutral zone_ and _probably getting blown to dust by Klingons_ when you got them to agree to this deal.’

‘I will not ask more of them than I know they will be capable of providing.’ Spock Prime smoothed a wrinkle in one long sleeve. ‘We should return to their ship. I will speak to them of the risks as well as the rewards.’

‘And if they don’t think it’s worth their lives on the fraction of a chance Earth _doesn’t_ fall to the Romulans?’ Jim asked.

‘I do not intend to accept defeat when there are other avenues to pursue,’ Spock Prime replied. ‘Do you, Jim?’

Something about that voice—it was always something about that voice. It spoke to the best of times, the best of instincts, deep below Jim’s ribs and even deeper in his gut; it was more than just a challenge, reminding him of guys like Captain Pike back on Earth. They were rare, but they were out there. Earth was their home the same as it was Jim’s and of course Spock was right about him.

Jim wished he didn’t have to be _so_ right.

‘I will have to contact Captain Pike,’ Spock added. Jim twitched before he realized the connection was an obvious one to make; this Spock didn’t know him as well as Spock Prime did, which was one point in Jim’s favor, at least. ‘This cannot be done without informing him.’

‘Then you shall speak with Captain Pike.’ Spock Prime’s gaze lingered on Jim’s face. Jim willed it not to feel so obvious, so naked; now, he wished he had left the stubble on, because it would’ve been one more shadow to use to his advantage. ‘And I will do what I can about securing the continued means of our transportation.’

‘Sure, of course you are.’ Jim shoved his hands into his pockets, where they stayed balled into tense fists. ‘Uhura’s never gonna go for it, you know.’

‘In my travels,’ Spock Prime replied, ‘I have learned that there is no concept so illogical as _never_ , Jim.’

When he said it like that, it was almost easy to believe he was right.

*


End file.
